“They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”
-“This Be the Verse,” Philip Larkin
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
–Norman Bates
Someone may want to start a Kickstarter for Ari Aster’s therapy bills.
In a mere two films, the 36-year-old writer-director has established himself as a next-gen horrormeister, and a genuine auteur in an age full of throne-seeking pretenders. Hereditary (2018), a family...
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”
-“This Be the Verse,” Philip Larkin
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
–Norman Bates
Someone may want to start a Kickstarter for Ari Aster’s therapy bills.
In a mere two films, the 36-year-old writer-director has established himself as a next-gen horrormeister, and a genuine auteur in an age full of throne-seeking pretenders. Hereditary (2018), a family...
- 4/11/2023
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Can a film with an entire scene of full-frontal frolicking in the rain still feel polite? Yes, as it turns out. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the god tier in sexy literary classics, but the sexiest thing in Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s Netflix adaptation are the shots of the English countryside. That surely doesn’t feel right.
Emma Corrin plays posh, yearning Constance Chatterley; Jack O’Connell is Mellors, the gruff gamekeeper who catches her eye after her husband, the upper-class Sir Clifford, is maimed in battle. I so wanted to love this film. A literary period drama? Sexual tension across the class divide? The shadow of war? Wonderful actors? It must be nearly Christmas. But instead of crackling with electricity, it just hums like an energy-efficient light bulb.
Dh Lawrence’s now infamous 1928 novel is about the human spirit recovering from a cataclysmic war. “Ours is essentially a tragic age,...
Emma Corrin plays posh, yearning Constance Chatterley; Jack O’Connell is Mellors, the gruff gamekeeper who catches her eye after her husband, the upper-class Sir Clifford, is maimed in battle. I so wanted to love this film. A literary period drama? Sexual tension across the class divide? The shadow of war? Wonderful actors? It must be nearly Christmas. But instead of crackling with electricity, it just hums like an energy-efficient light bulb.
Dh Lawrence’s now infamous 1928 novel is about the human spirit recovering from a cataclysmic war. “Ours is essentially a tragic age,...
- 12/2/2022
- by Jessie Thompson
- The Independent - Film
Can a film with an entire scene of full-frontal frolicking in the rain still feel polite? Yes, as it turns out. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the god tier in sexy literary classics, but the sexiest thing in Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s Netflix adaptation are the shots of the English countryside. That surely doesn’t feel right.
Emma Corrin plays posh, yearning Constance Chatterley; Jack O’Connell is Mellors, the gruff gamekeeper who catches her eye after her husband, the upper-class Sir Clifford, is maimed in battle. I so wanted to love this film. A literary period drama? Sexual tension across the class divide? The shadow of war? Wonderful actors? It must be nearly Christmas. But instead of crackling with electricity, it just hums like an energy-efficient light bulb.
Dh Lawrence’s now infamous 1928 novel is about the human spirit recovering from a cataclysmic war. “Ours is essentially a tragic age,...
Emma Corrin plays posh, yearning Constance Chatterley; Jack O’Connell is Mellors, the gruff gamekeeper who catches her eye after her husband, the upper-class Sir Clifford, is maimed in battle. I so wanted to love this film. A literary period drama? Sexual tension across the class divide? The shadow of war? Wonderful actors? It must be nearly Christmas. But instead of crackling with electricity, it just hums like an energy-efficient light bulb.
Dh Lawrence’s now infamous 1928 novel is about the human spirit recovering from a cataclysmic war. “Ours is essentially a tragic age,...
- 12/1/2022
- by Jessie Thompson
- The Independent - Film
It may never ever end up as a lyric in a Britney Spears’ song, but poet Philip Larkin’s often quoted “they f*ck you up, your mum and dad” line has a particular poignancy for the “Toxic” singer right now – at least figuratively.
Over seven months after the younger Spears’ past conservatorship welding father was first supposed to sit down for a deposition about the true state of the performer’s fortune and how much he was paid out over the 13 years his now middle-aged offspring was under his legal thumb, Jamie Spears is “running and hiding,” according to a filing today in LA Superior Court.
“Mr. Spears can run, but he cannot forever hide from his legal and fiduciary obligations,” exclaims the 21-page Motion to compel from Britney Spears’ attorney Matthew Rosengart (read it here).
“His stonewalling and obfuscation must not stop the truth from coming to light...
Over seven months after the younger Spears’ past conservatorship welding father was first supposed to sit down for a deposition about the true state of the performer’s fortune and how much he was paid out over the 13 years his now middle-aged offspring was under his legal thumb, Jamie Spears is “running and hiding,” according to a filing today in LA Superior Court.
“Mr. Spears can run, but he cannot forever hide from his legal and fiduciary obligations,” exclaims the 21-page Motion to compel from Britney Spears’ attorney Matthew Rosengart (read it here).
“His stonewalling and obfuscation must not stop the truth from coming to light...
- 5/26/2022
- by Dominic Patten
- Deadline Film + TV
Warning: contains spoilers for the Breeders season two finale.
Philip Larkin put it memorably, but there’s no need to take his word for it. We all know that characterful noses aren’t the only things carried down the generations. There are also the traits that no parent means to pass on: insecurities and neuroses absorbed in daily doses from age zero to left-home, that leach out involuntarily to our own kids when the time comes. For Martin Freeman’s character Paul in FX/Sky One comedy Breeders, it’s his anger and anxiety, inherited by son Luke (Alex Eastwood), and threatening to break their relationship.
The Breeders season two cliffhanger sees Paul voluntarily move out of the family home because Luke refuses to live with him. Partner Ally (Daisy Haggard) doesn’t want Paul to go, daughter Ava (Eve Prenelle) doesn’t want him to go, and Paul definitely doesn’t want to go,...
Philip Larkin put it memorably, but there’s no need to take his word for it. We all know that characterful noses aren’t the only things carried down the generations. There are also the traits that no parent means to pass on: insecurities and neuroses absorbed in daily doses from age zero to left-home, that leach out involuntarily to our own kids when the time comes. For Martin Freeman’s character Paul in FX/Sky One comedy Breeders, it’s his anger and anxiety, inherited by son Luke (Alex Eastwood), and threatening to break their relationship.
The Breeders season two cliffhanger sees Paul voluntarily move out of the family home because Luke refuses to live with him. Partner Ally (Daisy Haggard) doesn’t want Paul to go, daughter Ava (Eve Prenelle) doesn’t want him to go, and Paul definitely doesn’t want to go,...
- 5/18/2021
- by Louisa Mellor
- Den of Geek
European cousin to Marriage Story, Daniele Luchetti’s oddly soothing film follows the grisly meltdown of a middle-class couple
Fasten your mask straps, it’s the Venice film festival, a socially distanced extravaganza for the year of Covid, where tubs of hand-sanitiser stand in for Hollywood stars and the starting pistol is played by a thermometer gun to the head. Tradition dictates that the winner of the Golden Lion award is announced live on stage, a week on Sunday. But the real verdict could be delivered rather sooner than that.
With the big American titles largely absent, the organisers have found a solution of sorts in Lacci, the first Italian film to open the festival in more than a decade. Daniele Luchetti’s handsome divorce drama stands as a European cousin to Marriage Story in its focus on the grisly meltdown of a middle-class couple and the emotional baggage that...
Fasten your mask straps, it’s the Venice film festival, a socially distanced extravaganza for the year of Covid, where tubs of hand-sanitiser stand in for Hollywood stars and the starting pistol is played by a thermometer gun to the head. Tradition dictates that the winner of the Golden Lion award is announced live on stage, a week on Sunday. But the real verdict could be delivered rather sooner than that.
With the big American titles largely absent, the organisers have found a solution of sorts in Lacci, the first Italian film to open the festival in more than a decade. Daniele Luchetti’s handsome divorce drama stands as a European cousin to Marriage Story in its focus on the grisly meltdown of a middle-class couple and the emotional baggage that...
- 9/2/2020
- by Xan Brooks
- The Guardian - Film News
The director’s breakthrough film was about his parents’ divorce, and his latest movie seems to be about his own. But what he thinks they are really about is hope
Over the years, Noah Baumbach, the American writer/director, has made films about all sorts of things. Kicking and Screaming (1995) is about a group of college pals who refuse to move on with their lives. While We’re Young (2014) is about a friendship between a middle-aged documentary-maker and his wife, and a couple in their 20s. The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) is about siblings attempting to live in the shadow of their egomaniacal artist father. But for some of us, he really has only one true subject: D-i-v-o-r-c-e. Consider the best movies of his career so far, made almost 15 years apart: The Squid and the Whale (2005), the bittersweet picture that first brought him to most people’s attention, is about divorce, and so,...
Over the years, Noah Baumbach, the American writer/director, has made films about all sorts of things. Kicking and Screaming (1995) is about a group of college pals who refuse to move on with their lives. While We’re Young (2014) is about a friendship between a middle-aged documentary-maker and his wife, and a couple in their 20s. The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) is about siblings attempting to live in the shadow of their egomaniacal artist father. But for some of us, he really has only one true subject: D-i-v-o-r-c-e. Consider the best movies of his career so far, made almost 15 years apart: The Squid and the Whale (2005), the bittersweet picture that first brought him to most people’s attention, is about divorce, and so,...
- 12/1/2019
- by Rachel Cooke
- The Guardian - Film News
The title says "quiet" but this episode of Young Justice: Outsiders is mostly loud. Its quality is only adequate, though.
facebook
twitter
tumblr
This Young Justice: Outsiders review contains spoilers and some discussion of domestic violence. If you or a loved one needs help escaping or processing domestic violence, please visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Young Justice Season 3 Episode 20
"This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin has been quoted a couple of times in comics - once that I can remember in Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's The Wicked + The Divine, and once in Multiversity. And now, the famous line has at least been paraphrased by Young Justice in "Quiet Conversations," an episode that's almost entirely about the screwed up family dynamics driving about half of the show.
There are four stories that get some attention this week. Fatherbox is taking over Cyborg's body, and Black Lightning, Forager...
tumblr
This Young Justice: Outsiders review contains spoilers and some discussion of domestic violence. If you or a loved one needs help escaping or processing domestic violence, please visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Young Justice Season 3 Episode 20
"This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin has been quoted a couple of times in comics - once that I can remember in Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's The Wicked + The Divine, and once in Multiversity. And now, the famous line has at least been paraphrased by Young Justice in "Quiet Conversations," an episode that's almost entirely about the screwed up family dynamics driving about half of the show.
There are four stories that get some attention this week. Fatherbox is taking over Cyborg's body, and Black Lightning, Forager...
- 7/29/2019
- Den of Geek
Taron Egerton is terrific as the singer, but the real star of this electric biopic is director Dexter Fletcher
“When are you going to hug me?” That question echoes around Dexter Fletcher’s dazzling rock opera – a fantastical account of the highs and lows of Elton John’s wild-ride rise, told in frenetically full-blooded musical form. It’s the story of a little boy who became a big star while plaintively pleading “I want lurrve, but it’s impossible”; a shy kid (an “introverted extrovert”) who must learn to play-act confidence after enduring a childhood that would have struck a chord with Philip Larkin. Yet unlike the problematically rejigged chronology of Bohemian Rhapsody (which Fletcher rescued from disaster), this proudly nonlinear treat puts its jukebox soundtrack on shuffle, wittily deploying tunes to fit the mood rather than the timeline. The result is a riotous fact-meets-fiction swirl that combines the Brit-pic...
“When are you going to hug me?” That question echoes around Dexter Fletcher’s dazzling rock opera – a fantastical account of the highs and lows of Elton John’s wild-ride rise, told in frenetically full-blooded musical form. It’s the story of a little boy who became a big star while plaintively pleading “I want lurrve, but it’s impossible”; a shy kid (an “introverted extrovert”) who must learn to play-act confidence after enduring a childhood that would have struck a chord with Philip Larkin. Yet unlike the problematically rejigged chronology of Bohemian Rhapsody (which Fletcher rescued from disaster), this proudly nonlinear treat puts its jukebox soundtrack on shuffle, wittily deploying tunes to fit the mood rather than the timeline. The result is a riotous fact-meets-fiction swirl that combines the Brit-pic...
- 5/26/2019
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev has produced another masterpiece in this apocalyptic study of a failed marriage and the subsequent disappearance of a child
Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is a stark, mysterious and terrifying story of spiritual catastrophe: a drama with the ostensible form of a procedural crime thriller. It has a hypnotic intensity and unbearable ambiguity which is maintained until the very end. This is a story of modern Russia whose people are at the mercy of implacable forces, a loveless world like a planet without the full means to support human life, a place where the ordinary need for survival has mutated or upgraded into an unending aspirational demand for status, money, freedom to find an advantageous second marriage which brings a nice apartment, sex, luxury and the social media prerogative of selfies and self-affirmation. But all of it is underpinned, or overseen, by intensely conservative social norms of Christianity,...
Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Loveless is a stark, mysterious and terrifying story of spiritual catastrophe: a drama with the ostensible form of a procedural crime thriller. It has a hypnotic intensity and unbearable ambiguity which is maintained until the very end. This is a story of modern Russia whose people are at the mercy of implacable forces, a loveless world like a planet without the full means to support human life, a place where the ordinary need for survival has mutated or upgraded into an unending aspirational demand for status, money, freedom to find an advantageous second marriage which brings a nice apartment, sex, luxury and the social media prerogative of selfies and self-affirmation. But all of it is underpinned, or overseen, by intensely conservative social norms of Christianity,...
- 5/17/2017
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Louisa Mellor Apr 21, 2017
We chatted to actor Luke Newberry about his BBC Radio 4 Home Front role, In The Flesh, getting his start in acting and more…
“I’m still umm-ing, how annoying for you!” he says, but interviewing Luke Newberry isn’t annoying in the least. He’s at pains to give proper answers to questions, literally so judging by some of the noises he makes in our half-hour chat. His frustrated ‘aaghs’ and ‘ooohs’ and ‘umms’ are the sound of someone who doesn’t have a ready-made patter and who doesn’t want to just say any old thing.
See related Line Of Duty series 4 episode 5 review Line Of Duty series 4, and the clues hiding in series 1 Line Of Duty: creator Jed Mercurio interview
When I ask him who would be his dream director, for instance, Newberry pauses, asks if we can come back to it later, pauses...
We chatted to actor Luke Newberry about his BBC Radio 4 Home Front role, In The Flesh, getting his start in acting and more…
“I’m still umm-ing, how annoying for you!” he says, but interviewing Luke Newberry isn’t annoying in the least. He’s at pains to give proper answers to questions, literally so judging by some of the noises he makes in our half-hour chat. His frustrated ‘aaghs’ and ‘ooohs’ and ‘umms’ are the sound of someone who doesn’t have a ready-made patter and who doesn’t want to just say any old thing.
See related Line Of Duty series 4 episode 5 review Line Of Duty series 4, and the clues hiding in series 1 Line Of Duty: creator Jed Mercurio interview
When I ask him who would be his dream director, for instance, Newberry pauses, asks if we can come back to it later, pauses...
- 4/20/2017
- Den of Geek
Louisa Mellor Oct 19, 2016
Ahead of Black Mirror series 3 arriving on Netflix, here's our spoiler-free chat with writer Charlie Brooker and producer Annabel Jones…
Six years ago this month, Charlie Brooker took leave of his weekly TV column at The Guardian with a blistering final entry that was half mea culpa, half montage of his best bits. In it, he explained that after a decade, the fun had seeped out of writing cruel but honkingly funny caricatures of small screen personalities. It no longer felt okay to earn a living by describing David Dickinson as an “ageing Thundercat” or Anne Widdecombe as having “a face like a haunted cave in Poland”.
See related Ron Howard interview: Inferno, conspiracy theories Inferno review The Da Vinci Code Blu-ray review
Brooker’s growing TV writing and presenting career had turned him from poacher to gamekeeper. You couldn’t sustain that act while mixing in showbiz circles,...
Ahead of Black Mirror series 3 arriving on Netflix, here's our spoiler-free chat with writer Charlie Brooker and producer Annabel Jones…
Six years ago this month, Charlie Brooker took leave of his weekly TV column at The Guardian with a blistering final entry that was half mea culpa, half montage of his best bits. In it, he explained that after a decade, the fun had seeped out of writing cruel but honkingly funny caricatures of small screen personalities. It no longer felt okay to earn a living by describing David Dickinson as an “ageing Thundercat” or Anne Widdecombe as having “a face like a haunted cave in Poland”.
See related Ron Howard interview: Inferno, conspiracy theories Inferno review The Da Vinci Code Blu-ray review
Brooker’s growing TV writing and presenting career had turned him from poacher to gamekeeper. You couldn’t sustain that act while mixing in showbiz circles,...
- 10/18/2016
- Den of Geek
There's this alcoholic lawyer, see? Hasn't practiced in years, since his wife ran off, just drinks all day. Lives in a big house with his young daughter, whom he suspects isn't really his. One night he hears a gunshot. And he finds a sailor, who has been living in his attic without his knowledge. And who has just died in it, with a bullet in his heart. And now his daughter's sweetheart is the prime suspect.This unlikely story has actually been filmed several times. It's the plot of a novel by Georges Simenon, master of French crime fiction: since the story is really all about the generation gap and what Philip Larkin wrote about your mum and dad, one version of the story, Stranger in the House, sometimes known under the would-be trendy title Cop Out, was made in Britain in 1967 to take advantage of the youth theme: Geraldine Chaplin...
- 8/18/2016
- MUBI
★★★★☆ This Sundance award-winning documentary recalls English poet Philip Larkin's This Be the Verse: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad..." Then again, Larkin probably didn't have parents as paranoid as Oscar Angulo who, with ex-hippie Susanne, raised their six sons and one daughter in near-isolated lockdown. Like Grey Gardens, The Wolfpack (2015) blurs the traditional border between documentary filmmaker and subject, as director Crystelle Moselle captures the quotidian details of family dysfunction with intimacy, but also discretion. Sporting long hair and Sanskrit names, the Angulo brothers, aged 16-23, were forbidden by their father to leave their cramped public housing flat in Manhattan's Lower East Side.
- 8/28/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
The poet Philip Larkin was notably reactionary, and a lot worse, on a lot of subjects, and when he wrote jazz criticism in the 1960s, he was particularly disapproving of pretty much any such music recorded after the Okeh label was bought by Columbia in 1926. (Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration.) So it’s a little surprising to peruse Larkin’s collected writing on jazz and see him lavish (sometimes admittedly qualified) praise on the visionary Ornette Coleman, once the record-title-proclaimed Shape of Jazz to Come!, who died this morning at the age of 85. Coleman’s “500 odd bars on R.P.D.D.’,” Larkin wrote of a tune on the 1962 LP Ornette!, “ranging from lusty honking to meditative diminuendo and exhibiting unfailing resourcefulness at all stages, must be the most remarkable solo released this year so far.” Years later, bitching about Coleman’s Chappaqua Suite, Larkin grouses that Coleman has no chords,...
- 6/11/2015
- by Glenn Kenny
- Vulture
To American audiences, Pulp front man Jarvis Cocker has always been a little inscrutable. British, rail thin, well-dressed, and bespectacled, Cocker resembles something of a hybrid of Bryan Ferry and Philip Larkin. Although Pulp first scored an international hit in 1995 with “Common People," Cocker had been laboring away under the same moniker since 1978 — many of those years in his small hometown of Sheffield. Nearly a decade after the band’s demise, Florian Habicht’s new documentary, Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets, out now in theaters, follows Cocker & Co. back to Sheffield as they conclude their 2012 reunion tour.Musicians have said that the worst shows are hometown shows and the worst audiences are hometown audiences. Was that Pulp’s experience going back home to Sheffield?That was definitely a factor in why we were nervous playing [Sheffield] and maybe why we had put it off until the last...
- 11/24/2014
- by Erik Morse
- Vulture
A black-humoured but heartbreaking Spanish animation draws a desolate portrait of care home life
A warm welcome for this funny, heartbreaking animation from Spain by Ignacio Ferreras about a care home for people with Alzheimer's. A retired bank manager called Emilio is placed by his son in a home when his forgetfulness becomes too much to bear, and his new residency assumes the character of the politest possible prison movie. Poor bewildered Emilio is befriended by the dodgy Miguel, who shows Emilio how to survive and how to make the best impression on the staff. Watching this movie has the same desolate quality as Philip Larkin's poem The Building, and yet it is tender and lovable, too.
Continue reading...
A warm welcome for this funny, heartbreaking animation from Spain by Ignacio Ferreras about a care home for people with Alzheimer's. A retired bank manager called Emilio is placed by his son in a home when his forgetfulness becomes too much to bear, and his new residency assumes the character of the politest possible prison movie. Poor bewildered Emilio is befriended by the dodgy Miguel, who shows Emilio how to survive and how to make the best impression on the staff. Watching this movie has the same desolate quality as Philip Larkin's poem The Building, and yet it is tender and lovable, too.
Continue reading...
- 4/17/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The last time Felicity Jones played a British exchange student, hearts were broken in Like Crazy, the bittersweet 2011 indie romance that won her a special acting prize at the Sundance Film Festival. In Breathe In, another Sundance movie from Like Crazy director Drake Doremus, Jones plays another British exchange student who falls in love with an American. But this tale is much darker and more complex.
Jones plays a piano prodigy named Sophie who comes to America to experience the thrills of New York. Her host family, however, lives in upstate New York, far away from the bright lights and excitement.
Jones plays a piano prodigy named Sophie who comes to America to experience the thrills of New York. Her host family, however, lives in upstate New York, far away from the bright lights and excitement.
- 3/25/2014
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW - Inside Movies
A father-and-son editing team has compiled a new anthology in which 100 prominent male figures reveal the lines that make them cry
The cover of a new collection of poetry should probably carry a sticker bearing Shakespeare's warning: "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."
Poems That Make Grown Men Cry is an anthology of some of the most emotive lines in literature chosen by 100 famous and admired men, ranging from Daniel Radcliffe to Nick Cave, John le Carré and Jonathan Franzen. Published next month and edited by the journalist and biographer Anthony Holden and his film-producer son, Ben, the book is winning praise for introducing male readers to unfamiliar works – and emotions.
Contributor Simon Schama has tweeted enthusing about his choice, Wh Auden's Lullaby, the poem that opens with the words "Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm." Auden turns out to be the...
The cover of a new collection of poetry should probably carry a sticker bearing Shakespeare's warning: "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."
Poems That Make Grown Men Cry is an anthology of some of the most emotive lines in literature chosen by 100 famous and admired men, ranging from Daniel Radcliffe to Nick Cave, John le Carré and Jonathan Franzen. Published next month and edited by the journalist and biographer Anthony Holden and his film-producer son, Ben, the book is winning praise for introducing male readers to unfamiliar works – and emotions.
Contributor Simon Schama has tweeted enthusing about his choice, Wh Auden's Lullaby, the poem that opens with the words "Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm." Auden turns out to be the...
- 3/23/2014
- by Vanessa Thorpe
- The Guardian - Film News
This funny and heartbreaking Spanish animation set in a care home for people with Alzheimer's is desolate yet lovable
The warmest possible welcome for this funny and heartbreaking animation from Spain by Ignacio Ferreras, which I saw at the San Sebastián film festival a couple of years ago, and which is now getting a limited UK showing.
It is about a care home for people with Alzheimer's. A retired bank manager called Emilio (originally voiced by Álvaro Guevara, but redubbed by Martin Sheen for this release) is placed by his son in a home when his forgetfulness becomes too much to bear, and his new residency assumes the character of the politest possible prison movie. Poor bewildered Emilio is befriended by the dodgy Miguel, who shows Emilio how to survive and how to make the best impression on the nurses and care-facility managers. This movie has the same desolate quality...
The warmest possible welcome for this funny and heartbreaking animation from Spain by Ignacio Ferreras, which I saw at the San Sebastián film festival a couple of years ago, and which is now getting a limited UK showing.
It is about a care home for people with Alzheimer's. A retired bank manager called Emilio (originally voiced by Álvaro Guevara, but redubbed by Martin Sheen for this release) is placed by his son in a home when his forgetfulness becomes too much to bear, and his new residency assumes the character of the politest possible prison movie. Poor bewildered Emilio is befriended by the dodgy Miguel, who shows Emilio how to survive and how to make the best impression on the nurses and care-facility managers. This movie has the same desolate quality...
- 2/21/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The rise of complex TV series and vast novels shows we still prefer commitment to a quick fix
The young woman opposite on the tube last week was lost in Donna Tartt's new novel, The Goldfinch. She personified the truth that attention deficit disorder is a lie. I'm not saying she was weirdly small, but she could have used the 771-page book as a coffee table. She was about halfway through and the covers kept springing back in defiance of her struggling fingers. When she finally got off at Earl's Court she looked like she needed assistance, or a trolley.
Why didn't she read Tartt as an ebook? Why did she choose this inefficient delivery system that proves what Philip Larkin wrote at the end of A Study of Reading Habits, namely that "books are a load of crap"? There seem to be two reasons.
One, the notion of conspicuous consumption developed by Thorstein Veblen.
The young woman opposite on the tube last week was lost in Donna Tartt's new novel, The Goldfinch. She personified the truth that attention deficit disorder is a lie. I'm not saying she was weirdly small, but she could have used the 771-page book as a coffee table. She was about halfway through and the covers kept springing back in defiance of her struggling fingers. When she finally got off at Earl's Court she looked like she needed assistance, or a trolley.
Why didn't she read Tartt as an ebook? Why did she choose this inefficient delivery system that proves what Philip Larkin wrote at the end of A Study of Reading Habits, namely that "books are a load of crap"? There seem to be two reasons.
One, the notion of conspicuous consumption developed by Thorstein Veblen.
- 11/6/2013
- by Stuart Jeffries
- The Guardian - Film News
What do Beethoven, Capote and Auden have in common? Seb Emina discovers the strange daily rituals of our artistic heroes
During the late 1940s, John Cheever worked to an unconventional routine. In the morning he would put on his business suit, leave his apartment, and catch the lift downstairs with any commuters. Then, when they reached the ground floor, he would keep going, down to the basement, where he'd walk to his favourite storage room, strip down to his boxer shorts and spend the morning writing. At noon he put his suit back on and headed back upstairs. Lunch followed, then a leisurely afternoon.
It worked for him. Or rather, it worked for his work. Despite their drudging reputation, fixed routines have proved an indispensable tool to artists of all kinds, from George Sand (who wrote through the night supported by chocolate and tobacco) to David Lynch (who no longer...
During the late 1940s, John Cheever worked to an unconventional routine. In the morning he would put on his business suit, leave his apartment, and catch the lift downstairs with any commuters. Then, when they reached the ground floor, he would keep going, down to the basement, where he'd walk to his favourite storage room, strip down to his boxer shorts and spend the morning writing. At noon he put his suit back on and headed back upstairs. Lunch followed, then a leisurely afternoon.
It worked for him. Or rather, it worked for his work. Despite their drudging reputation, fixed routines have proved an indispensable tool to artists of all kinds, from George Sand (who wrote through the night supported by chocolate and tobacco) to David Lynch (who no longer...
- 10/8/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
"The Inspired" featured a wholesome and pleasant family portrait... if the Addams Family is your thing, that is.
Breen Frazier (who wrote this Criminal Minds episode) served up the second half of a gruesome and utterly lovely story, one that featured a family who put the "diss" in "dysfunction." There was a mother who was a vindictive narcissist and a pair of psychopathic twins - one delusional and one vindictive - along with a schizophrenic father. The dad in this story was by comparison a ray of sunshine:
Morgan: We're looking for a Mr. Bill Robbins.
Robbins: The sun and the moon have arrived. I'm ready to join you in your golden chariot.
Reid: We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you have a moment?
Robbins: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes! My life is the answer to your questions. | permalink
You get the sense that, as...
Breen Frazier (who wrote this Criminal Minds episode) served up the second half of a gruesome and utterly lovely story, one that featured a family who put the "diss" in "dysfunction." There was a mother who was a vindictive narcissist and a pair of psychopathic twins - one delusional and one vindictive - along with a schizophrenic father. The dad in this story was by comparison a ray of sunshine:
Morgan: We're looking for a Mr. Bill Robbins.
Robbins: The sun and the moon have arrived. I'm ready to join you in your golden chariot.
Reid: We'd like to ask you a few questions, if you have a moment?
Robbins: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes yes! My life is the answer to your questions. | permalink
You get the sense that, as...
- 10/3/2013
- by wolfshades@me.com (Douglas Wolfe)
- TVfanatic
Philip Larkin once claimed that "Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / (which was rather late for me) - / Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban / And the Beatles' first LP." When "Masters of Sex," the new Showtime drama premiering on Sunday, September 29, begins, it's conservative 1956, and despite Larkin's quip, sex has in fact been invented, it's just still mysterious, undiscussed, completely shadowy territory. Created by Michelle Ashford (a writer who's worked on "The Pacific" and "Boomtown"), "Masters of Sex" is about Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan), who were real-life pioneers in the research of human sexuality at a time when in-depth evaluations of such topics, even in a medical context, were looked at as obscene. This would seem to put "Masters of Sex" in similar territory as "Kinsey" and "Hysteria," where repression and meets explicit talk (and action) under the aegis of research. "For science!
- 9/26/2013
- by Alison Willmore
- Indiewire
Ryan Gosling. For the majority of people that name will be enough to persuade them to see The Place Beyond The Pines. For the rest, my review follows.
When Luke finds out he is a father, he decides to take responsibility and provide for his lover Romina and young son Jason by using his specialist skills to pull off a number of bank heists. However, when Romina tells Luke that he should leave them alone he - as movie lore dictates - carries out one final heist in order to leave some sort of legacy with his offspring. This last raid inevitably goes wrong and puts Luke face to face with Bradley Cooper’s police officer Avery. From this point on the film shifts gear as we are introduced to the murky world of corrupt policemen and the lengths to which people go to get ahead in politics.
Opening with...
When Luke finds out he is a father, he decides to take responsibility and provide for his lover Romina and young son Jason by using his specialist skills to pull off a number of bank heists. However, when Romina tells Luke that he should leave them alone he - as movie lore dictates - carries out one final heist in order to leave some sort of legacy with his offspring. This last raid inevitably goes wrong and puts Luke face to face with Bradley Cooper’s police officer Avery. From this point on the film shifts gear as we are introduced to the murky world of corrupt policemen and the lengths to which people go to get ahead in politics.
Opening with...
- 4/14/2013
- Shadowlocked
In her latest film Helen McCrory is once again playing a mature woman with a youthful lover. And why not, she asks? Though in real life, they'd have to fight off her husband, Damian Lewis, aka Brody from Homeland…
It's a good thing in an actor to know how to make an entrance, and Helen McCrory does. She arrives late – dashing in every sense. It's not possible to walk into a room unobserved wearing a coat like hers: the colour of wet sand, with fur cuffs and lapels. Nor can it pass uncommented upon. Is it as comfortable as it is beautiful? "Comfortable on me as it was on the fox," she says, with an air of self-mocking defiance, shrugging inside it: "It's from Paris," she adds, settling into the red leather corner banquette in Colbert, Sloane Square – a cafe engaged in a more doomed attempt than hers at recalling Paris.
It's a good thing in an actor to know how to make an entrance, and Helen McCrory does. She arrives late – dashing in every sense. It's not possible to walk into a room unobserved wearing a coat like hers: the colour of wet sand, with fur cuffs and lapels. Nor can it pass uncommented upon. Is it as comfortable as it is beautiful? "Comfortable on me as it was on the fox," she says, with an air of self-mocking defiance, shrugging inside it: "It's from Paris," she adds, settling into the red leather corner banquette in Colbert, Sloane Square – a cafe engaged in a more doomed attempt than hers at recalling Paris.
- 4/13/2013
- by Kate Kellaway
- The Guardian - Film News
From a full programme of film and stage adaptations to a new James Bond novel, unpublished works by Rs Thomas and Wg Sebald and a new prize for women writers, 2013 is set to be a real page-turner
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
- 1/5/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Michael Haneke's bleak portrayal of an elderly couple's last days will strip filmgoers of the delusion that love can conquer all
Love has been the lifeblood of cinema, yet its portrayal on the big screen has been narrowly focused. Scroll through the 6,609 titles keyworded "love" on IMDb and you'll notice that most of the films rely on a rather particular notion of what love might be.
They tend to deal with the phenomenon dubbed "limerence" by psychologist Dorothy Tennov. This has been described as "an involuntary interpersonal state that involves an acute longing for emotional reciprocation, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, feelings and behaviours and emotional dependence on another person". The condition arises when the hypothalamus prompts the pituitary gland to release a cocktail of dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, oestrogen and testosterone. Unless requited, it usually fades away quite quickly. Only 5% of the population are reckoned to be afflicted at any one time,...
Love has been the lifeblood of cinema, yet its portrayal on the big screen has been narrowly focused. Scroll through the 6,609 titles keyworded "love" on IMDb and you'll notice that most of the films rely on a rather particular notion of what love might be.
They tend to deal with the phenomenon dubbed "limerence" by psychologist Dorothy Tennov. This has been described as "an involuntary interpersonal state that involves an acute longing for emotional reciprocation, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, feelings and behaviours and emotional dependence on another person". The condition arises when the hypothalamus prompts the pituitary gland to release a cocktail of dopamine, norepinephrine, phenylethylamine, oestrogen and testosterone. Unless requited, it usually fades away quite quickly. Only 5% of the population are reckoned to be afflicted at any one time,...
- 11/19/2012
- by David Cox
- The Guardian - Film News
Michael Haneke's effortlessly graceful picture will come to be seen as one of the greatest films about the confrontation of death and ageing
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," said Benjamin Franklin. The latter part of this assertion, however, is currently being challenged by some famous companies such as Google, Amazon and Starbucks and a good many familiar TV faces, while the unavoidability of death is a matter frequently evaded by euphemism and clouded by sentimentality. Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke has often been open to the charge of obscurity, ambivalence and obliquity, but no one has ever accused him of suggesting that life is other than a vale of tears best endured by honesty, love, unremitting work and a frank recognition of its essentially tragic nature.
These qualities are to the forefront in his bracing new film, Amour, in which a...
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," said Benjamin Franklin. The latter part of this assertion, however, is currently being challenged by some famous companies such as Google, Amazon and Starbucks and a good many familiar TV faces, while the unavoidability of death is a matter frequently evaded by euphemism and clouded by sentimentality. Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke has often been open to the charge of obscurity, ambivalence and obliquity, but no one has ever accused him of suggesting that life is other than a vale of tears best endured by honesty, love, unremitting work and a frank recognition of its essentially tragic nature.
These qualities are to the forefront in his bracing new film, Amour, in which a...
- 11/19/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Daniel Day-Lewis might be best known for his Oscar-winning roles in movies like "There Will Be Blood" and "My Left Foot," but his first claim to fame was his father. Day-Lewis is the son of British Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who also wrote novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake.
Cecil passed away in 1972, and now his son is donating his papers to his alma mater, Oxford University. The archive includes 54 boxes of his early drafts and letters from famous figures like Robert Graves, Philip Larkin and actor John Gielgud, the Associated Press reports.
Day-Lewis has a pretty big year ahead of him. Up next, he plays Abraham Lincoln in the Stephen Spielberg-directed film "Lincoln." Though that movie doesn't come out until Nov. 16, it's already earning Day-Lewis some serious Oscar buzz.
Cecil passed away in 1972, and now his son is donating his papers to his alma mater, Oxford University. The archive includes 54 boxes of his early drafts and letters from famous figures like Robert Graves, Philip Larkin and actor John Gielgud, the Associated Press reports.
Day-Lewis has a pretty big year ahead of him. Up next, he plays Abraham Lincoln in the Stephen Spielberg-directed film "Lincoln." Though that movie doesn't come out until Nov. 16, it's already earning Day-Lewis some serious Oscar buzz.
- 10/30/2012
- by editorial@zap2it.com
- Pop2it
Tamasin and Daniel Day-Lewis hand over poet laureate's archive including manuscripts and letter from Wh Auden.
Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.
The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.
"It is a wonderful archive...
Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.
The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.
The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.
"It is a wonderful archive...
- 10/30/2012
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
She didn't think of herself as a child star, even when she was one. Dakota Fanning talks about growing up making movies and her latest role as a teenager with terminal cancer in Now Is Good
'Being brave lets no one off the grave," wrote Philip Larkin in Aubade. "Death is no different whined at than withstood." Tell that to Tessa, the 17-year-old heroine of Ol Parker's film Now Is Good, whose attitude is more rage against the dying of the light, while wisecracking. With her life foreshortened by leukaemia, Tessa draws up a checklist of experiences, including having sex and taking drugs, to work through before she dies. Knowing that Tessa is played by Dakota Fanning, Hollywood's pop-eyed poppet-of-choice for more than a decade, makes it difficult not to anticipate The Bucket List: The Early Years. Difficult but wrong. Against the odds, Now Is Good is good – very good.
'Being brave lets no one off the grave," wrote Philip Larkin in Aubade. "Death is no different whined at than withstood." Tell that to Tessa, the 17-year-old heroine of Ol Parker's film Now Is Good, whose attitude is more rage against the dying of the light, while wisecracking. With her life foreshortened by leukaemia, Tessa draws up a checklist of experiences, including having sex and taking drugs, to work through before she dies. Knowing that Tessa is played by Dakota Fanning, Hollywood's pop-eyed poppet-of-choice for more than a decade, makes it difficult not to anticipate The Bucket List: The Early Years. Difficult but wrong. Against the odds, Now Is Good is good – very good.
- 9/21/2012
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
Directors' group to investigate after Cannes film festival snubs women for Palme d'Or prize
The woman behind the hugely successful new BBC drama Parade's End is leading a campaign to give female directors a better deal in television.
Susanna White, whose adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's four-volume novel is winning widespread acclaim, is a member of Directors UK, a group representing British film and television directors, which has set up an all-women working party to examine the difficulties experienced by aspiring female directors. The move is partly a response to the fact that no women were entered for the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes film festival.
White told the Observer that she had only broken into the top ranks of directors with extreme difficulty. "I think my journey has been a very, very, slow one."
Welcoming the new focus, she said: "I'm very keen for this to happen.
The woman behind the hugely successful new BBC drama Parade's End is leading a campaign to give female directors a better deal in television.
Susanna White, whose adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's four-volume novel is winning widespread acclaim, is a member of Directors UK, a group representing British film and television directors, which has set up an all-women working party to examine the difficulties experienced by aspiring female directors. The move is partly a response to the fact that no women were entered for the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes film festival.
White told the Observer that she had only broken into the top ranks of directors with extreme difficulty. "I think my journey has been a very, very, slow one."
Welcoming the new focus, she said: "I'm very keen for this to happen.
- 9/8/2012
- by Maggie Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
The new Bond film favours Carry On jokes over Cold War antics
James Bond first appeared between hard covers in 1953, the year of the Coronation, and became established between warm sheets a decade later with his second movie, From Russia With Love, in the year that, according to Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse began with the ascendancy of The Beatles, the Great Train Robbers and Christine Keeler.
He is, in effect, both a national institution to be paraded in On Her Majesty's Secret Service every couple of years, and a survivor of that short-lived period of heady hedonism dubbed Swinging Britain. He's also managed to retain his post-imperial role as the playboy hero of the Western world, a position firmly established in 1961 when White House publicists, to further Jack Kennedy's image, put it around that Ian Fleming was the President's favourite light reading.
Continue reading...
James Bond first appeared between hard covers in 1953, the year of the Coronation, and became established between warm sheets a decade later with his second movie, From Russia With Love, in the year that, according to Philip Larkin, sexual intercourse began with the ascendancy of The Beatles, the Great Train Robbers and Christine Keeler.
He is, in effect, both a national institution to be paraded in On Her Majesty's Secret Service every couple of years, and a survivor of that short-lived period of heady hedonism dubbed Swinging Britain. He's also managed to retain his post-imperial role as the playboy hero of the Western world, a position firmly established in 1961 when White House publicists, to further Jack Kennedy's image, put it around that Ian Fleming was the President's favourite light reading.
Continue reading...
- 11/24/2002
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.