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He Said – He Said … Top Films of the Decade
28 December 2009 4:18 PM, PST
| The Scorecard Review
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He Said – He Said … The Top 7 Films of the Decade
Our lists are done. We’ve checked them twice (and then some). Now there is only one thing left to do, complain, rant and argue. It’s time for the He Said – He Said … Top 7 Films of the Decade.
It’s He (Jeff Bayer) and his list …
7. Inglourious Basterds
6. Moulin Rouge!
5. Michael Clayton
4. Memento
3. Wall-e
2. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
1. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
Versus
He (Nick Allen) and his list …
7. The Band’s Visit
6. Superbad
5. The Lives of Others
4. Adaptation
3. The Dark Knight
2. Talk to Her
1. There Will Be Blood
Complete Coverage of Top 7 Films of the Decade
Top 7 Films of the Decade by Jeff Bayer
Top 7 Movies of the Decade by Nick Allen
He Said – He Said … Top 7 Films of the Decade
Amazing. Not one movie in common. I’ve decided to let
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- Jeff Bayer
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Running Late
27 December 2009 9:51 PM, PST
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As we wind down to year's end, we find Michael Haneke's Cannes conqueror fashionably late to the party, while Paramount waited three years to release the Renée Zellweger horror flick "Case 39" and a mere half-century later, audiences will finally see the fruits of an unproduced Tennessee Williams screenplay. Throw in a pair of modern Korean films and you've got yourself an exciting way to start the new year.
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"Case 39"
We can only hope it's no reflection of quality that this latest volley from the creepy-kid subgenre sat on the shelf for so long that its director, Christian Alvart, had another project (daffy sci-fi chiller "Pandorum") wrapped, released and mostly ignored before this domestic thriller even made it to our shores. The German helmer's English-language debut (at least chronologically) has Renée Zellweger
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- Neil Pedley
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The Best Films of 2009
22 December 2009 11:57 AM, PST
| ifc.com
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Matt Singer: We entered 2009 with a new president who promised to bring our country hope. But looking back at the year in film, I don't see a lot of hope; I see a lot of grief and despair. Oh sure, the box office charts were dominated by your now-typical assortment of franchises, spin-offs, reboots and sequels -- a major cause of grief and despair for some -- but you also had enough apocalypse movies to fill a book on Biblical prophecy. Even some of the obligatory superheroes got dark: the world (spoiler alert!) doesn't end in "Watchmen," but it comes awfully close.
There was an air of doom in certain quarters of the film industry this year too, as the effects of the bad economy rippled through everything from festival attendance to the shriveling ranks of working film critics. Examining my own list of the year's best, I find that
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- Alison Willmore
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Movie Posters of the Decade: A Follow-Up
20 December 2009 12:25 PM, PST
| The Auteurs
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Last week I posted my selection of the decade's best movie posters: a post which attracted a remarkable amount of attention, not least from the estimable Roger Ebert, who posted his rival choices on his blog. The Auteurs contributor Andrew Grant, a.k.a. Filmbrain, was also inspired to post his own favorites, many of which are absolute knockouts. We also received a phenomenal and rather humbling response on our forum, enough to convince me that I need to do a follow-up post. There were some rather dubious choices which I won't name, but there were also plenty of stunning foreign posters that I had never seen before, which is what we were really hoping to see. I'd like to give a special shout-out to “Samantha” who has posted an extraordinary selection of good stuff.
More than a few people suggested that I should have included the poster for Vincent Gallo
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Fueling the Audience's Mistrust: The White Ribbon
20 December 2009 2:00 AM, PST
| TribecaFilm.com
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Michael Haneke is the master filmmaker of the modern world. More than any of his contemporaries, or even his descendants, Haneke has displayed an unparalleled understanding of how films should deal with contemporary technology. As auterist works like Benny's Video, Cache, and Funny Games (both the original and the notorious American remake) prove, Haneke is the poet of video cameras, the philosopher of television, deconstructing technology and that audience's expectations of it with his red blinking light.
Which is why it came as something of a shock to learn that his latest project, The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergestchichte) , is set a long time ago, in a land far, far away - so far, in fact, that in this land they don't even have cars, let alone TVs. Set in a German village in 1913 and 1914, The White Ribbon posed a significant challenge to Haneke's
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The Notable Films of 2010: Part One
15 December 2009 7:47 AM, PST
| Dark Horizons
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After such success with this last year, today comes the first in a multi-chapter look at the various cinematic releases hitting the U.S. in 2010.
Each 'Volume' contains brief descriptions and editorial opinion/analysis of around 25-30 films, and at present it's looking to run around nine volumes in length.
Expect the remaining ones to go up between now and the first official weekend of releases on January 8th.
13
Opens: 2010
Cast: Jason Statham, Alexander Skarsgard, Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, 50 Cent
Director: Géla Babluani
Summary: A remake of 2005 French thriller "13 (Tzameti)". A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.
Analysis: Remakes are very common, the same director remaking his own film in English is rarer but still not unheard of ("Funny Games," "Bangkok Dangerous," "The
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- Garth Franklin
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The Notable Films of 2010: Part One
15 December 2009 7:47 AM, PST
| Dark Horizons
| See recent Dark Horizons news
»
After such success with this last year, today comes the first in a multi-chapter look at the various cinematic releases hitting the U.S. in 2010.
Each 'Volume' contains brief descriptions and editorial opinion/analysis of around 25-30 films, and at present it's looking to run around nine volumes in length.
Expect the remaining ones to go up between now and the first official weekend of releases on January 8th.
13
Opens: 2010
Cast: Jason Statham, Alexander Skarsgard, Mickey Rourke, Ray Winstone, 50 Cent
Director: Géla Babluani
Summary: A remake of 2005 French thriller "13 (Tzameti)". A naive young man assumes a dead man's identity and finds himself embroiled in an underground world of power, violence, and chance where men gamble behind closed doors on the lives of other men.
Analysis: Remakes are very common, the same director remaking his own film in English is rarer but still not unheard of ("Funny Games," "Bangkok Dangerous," "The
»
- Garth Franklin
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The White Ribbon Review
13 December 2009 3:48 PM, PST
| ReelLoop.com
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Michael Haneke is celebrated as one of the most confrontational currently active film makers in Europe. His films Hidden, The Piano Teacher and Funny Games all actively try and engage their audiences with Haneke’s polemic ideologies, his films rather violently placing the director’s world view on the screen. Funny Games even had the gall to break the fourth wall to hammer home its points, literally pointing a finger at the audience. The White Ribbon, however, is a different kettle of fish. Rather than directly telling the audience what to think, Haneke allows for several ambiguities to arise and, as such, the film is a more rewarding experience. This does not mean that Haneke has abandoned all his trademark styles though. The White Ribbon, his Palme D’Or and European Film Award winning picture, is as sinister, as misanthropic and as ideologically driven as anything he has committed to celluloid thus far.
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- Kieron
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Postmodern Warfare
4 December 2009 8:25 AM, PST
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No filmmaker working today explores the act of watching as rigorously (and, some might say, as pedantically) as Michael Haneke, whose output largely consists of a single film, made over and over again in slightly different ways, about the viewer's relationship to on-screen violence.
The Austrian provocateur's cinematic lectures on how we're all to blame for fostering a bloodthirsty entertainment culture are best summed up by "Funny Games" (and its shot-for-shot Stateside remake), which -- in typical Haneke fashion -- builds tension by teasing brutality while also cannily refusing to show us the actual slash-and-kill money shots. It's a denial that serves as an audience chastisement for wanting to see, and get a kick out of, true horror. When it works, it's its own kind of knife twist; when it doesn't it can make Haneke seem like a tiresome schoolmarm, an artist who casts himself in the role of omnipotent,
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- Nick Schager
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Micheal Haneke: Masterclasses in Fear
3 December 2009 10:03 AM, PST
| t5m.com
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The first time I saw a Micheal Haneke film I was fourteen. Late at night I stumbled across a story, whose title I had missed, about a somewhat reclusive young boy obsessed with violent images, including his own home made video of a pig being killed on a relatives’ farm. A deconstruction of the media, it's violent draw and the moral reactions of those who rely on it's power unfolds as Benny plots and kills a friend on camera. The coldness of the picture unsettled me and I would remember it's images for years to come, never able to find the film again, or its name.
I wouldn't see Benny's Video again until 12 years later, though, when I did, it's power had not diminished. I had remembered the murder and it's lead up, the more obviously off putting aspects of the film, but perhaps the most horrifying part was forgotten about.
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- Neil Innes
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Michael Haneke: 'The World Would Be Much Poorer Without Art'
2 December 2009 9:45 AM, PST
| Movieline
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Adored, reviled, emulated and microanalyzed, Michael Haneke is everything an auteur should be. The Munich-born, Viennese-raised filmmaker won his first Palme d'Or with this year's The White Ribbon (opening in the U.S., finally, on Dec. 30). Something of a departure for the man preoccupied with the intersection of technology and senseless violence in movies like Benny's Video, Caché and both sadistic versions of his Funny Games, Ribbon sheds the director's favored, blueish palette for monochromatic black-and-white, and dials the clocks back to 1913, where a series of bizarre mishaps and cruel, gruesome pranks befall a German agrarian town. As the braided narratives draw to a close and the Great War begins, we've borne witness to numerous brutalities and acts of violence. But what surprises are the frequent, deftly staged moments that come in between -- displays of what some might consider sheer sentimentality: a child grappling with the concept of death
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A season of Haneke at the BFI
25 November 2009 5:48 AM, PST
| Twitch
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With so much praise being piled on Michael Haneke's latest meticulous work, The White Ribbon, it's a great time to reassess some of his back catalogue - and in what better way than on a big screen at the BFI. London's Southbank complex is hosting a season of the Austrian's work from today until 17th December, screening Funny Games Us, Hidden, The Seventh Continent, Time of the Wolf, and of course, The White Ribbon. Haneke's fastidious compositions and lengthy takes demand theatrical viewing to fully absorb, so it's a rare and rather special opportunity for fans and sceptics alike.
You can buy tickets here.
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Liff 09: Review of Dogtooth
16 November 2009 4:39 PM, PST
| QuietEarth.us
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Year: 2009
Directors: Giorgos Lanthimos
Writers: Giorgos Lanthimos & Efthymis Filippou
IMDb: link
Trailer: link
Review by: projectcyclops
Rating: 8 out of 10
Dogtooth is, in many respects, exactly the kind of film we like here at QuietEarth. It’s dark, inventive, amusing and also pretty ambitious. It concerns one of the weirdest families ever put on screen - a husband and wife who keep their three children confined to the house and high-walled garden of their estate; insisting that the outside world is in chaos, and that they cannot leave until their ‘Dogtooth’ (incisor) has fallen-out and been replaced, something we know will never happen…
The kids ages range from about 16 to 21, although it’s not made clear as the three of them; two girls and one boy, act like young children anyway. The quick tempered patriarch sets them tasks and games to keep them busy, rewarding them with the household currency of fun-stickers.
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The Auteurs Daily: Toronto and Nyff. The White Ribbon
13 October 2009 12:38 PM, PDT
| The Auteurs
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"As is the case with several films in this year's New York Film Festival, Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon exemplifies the pleasures and drawbacks of auteurism," begins Eric Hynes in Reverse Shot. "On one hand, familiarity with Haneke's (or Denis's or Dumont's or Breillat's or Resnais's or Rivette's) filmography deepens our understanding of his latest film. We can see patterns, hear rhymes and echoes, obsess over variations, while monitoring the path of a larger career arc - the director's progress and maturation. On the other hand, we're all too familiar with what's in store. Viewed in relation to previous work, new films can seem not so new. They are too familiar. Which side gets the upper hand largely depends on one's appreciation or affection for the filmmaker (and filmmaking project) in question. Even indefatigable auteurists, for whom pattern itself - rather than the meaning of the revisited gesture or theme - is sacrosanct,
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Fantastic Fest: Uwe Boll, Auteur
5 October 2009 11:44 AM, PDT
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Two things spread quickly at film festivals: upper respiratory tract infections and buzz. And the buzz spreading around Fantastic Fest last week was that the impossible had happened: that Uwe Boll, the infamous director of notoriously (and, at times, enjoyably) terrible films like "Alone in the Dark" and "BloodRayne," had made a good movie. Film School Rejects declared Boll's new film "Rampage" "sick, violent, and fun"; /Film called it "not just good in comparison to the rest of his filmography, but a good movie in its own right."
Usually Boll's movies aren't just bad, they're splendidly bad. They're lazily plotted, haphazardly shot and confusingly edited, and yet, somehow, in the alchemical confluence of all that badness they take on a certain transcendent magic. Many of his past efforts were financed through a now-defunct German tax shelter that, if I understand it correctly, only required independent film investors to pay taxes
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- Matt Singer
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David Cronenberg to Direct His Own Remake of The Fly
24 September 2009 9:00 AM, PDT
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David Cronenberg's The Fly has been on the remake block for at least a couple of years now, along with several other Cronenberg flicks including Videodrome [1] and Scanners [2] (much to the dismay of horror fans everywhere). This week, however, THR's Risky Biz Blog [3] brings us word that Fox may have finally found a director for the remake that fans can actually get behind: David Cronenberg himself!
That's right, despite the fact that Cronenberg had previously stated that he had no desire to take part in a remake (he wasn't involved in The Fly II either), he has apparently had a change of heart. Did his recent work on a Paris opera adaptation of The Fly rekindle some interest?
A lot of people are grouping this in as part of a new trend where directors have been remaking their own work; for example, Michael Haneke's Funny Games, and Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge.
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- Sean
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Cronenberg Working on 'The Fly', Again
23 September 2009 9:15 PM, PDT
| CinemaSpy
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One of David Cronenberg’s most well-known movies could be getting a reboot...by David Cronenberg.
The Fly, which the Canadian auteur wrote and shot for Fox in 1986, was itself a remake of Kurt Neumann’s science-fiction classic. But critics lauded Cronenberg’s film for being, they claimed, an allegory about AIDS, and the movie clearly struck a chord: it earned $40M at the box office and helped make stars out of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.
Goldblum played Seth Brundle, an eccentric scientist experimenting with how to teleport living creatures. He uses himself as a guinea pig, but when a fly enters the teleporter, Brundle’s DNA gets altered and his body begins mutating—in miraculous, then grotesque ways. Davis starred as his partner and love interest Veronica.
In the past, Cronenberg said he was not interested in remaking The Fly, but clearly he has changed his opinion. Lately,
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David Cronenberg Remaking The Fly
23 September 2009 8:23 PM, PDT
| cinemablend.com
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We're very used to bemoaning remakes of classic films, but it's something completely different to see a filmmaker, a respected filmmaker at that, participate in a remake of his own movie. Somehow, in some way, David Cronenberg has been sucked into that trap. According to THR, Cronenberg has signed on to remake The Fly, the 1986 movie in which Jeff Goldblum turns into, well, a fly.
Yeah, sure, Alfred Hitchcock remade The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Michael Haneke decided he needed to specifically punish Americans when he made an English-language version of Funny Games. But Cronenberg has always seemed like a filmmaker who moves forward, not the kind who revisits his own work. He should consider himself lucky he's not out promoting any movies at the moment, because otherwise he'd be faced with a litany of geek questions that would never, ever end.
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Fabrice Du Welz Lines Up More
12 September 2009
| shocktillyoudrop.com
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Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz ( Calvaire , Vinyan ) has lined up his next project and it will find him working on U.S. soil.
Described as "another exploration of the world of madness," the psychological thriller is called More and he's pulled in Brad Corbet ( Funny Games ) to star. Du Welz will re-team with director of photography Benoit Debie. Shooting is expected to begin in the U.S. in March.
Du Welz tells ShockTillYouDrop.com he can't reveal plot details at this time, however, "It's based on real event, it's gonna be extreme and it's happens in the art world in New York."
More is penned by newcomer Zachary Wigon and is being produced by Alex Mar and Nicholas Shumaker of Empire 8 Productions, in conjunction with Michael Gentile of Paris-based
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Int'l Trailer for Haneke's Palme D'Or Winning 'White Ribbon'
14 August 2009 3:03 PM, PDT
| Rope of Silicon
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My personal experience with Austrian helmer Michael Haneke is basically zero. Outside of catching his remake of his very own Funny Games last year (which I hated) I haven't seen any of his films although much of his works has been well received, such as his upcoming release, the Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or winner The White Ribbon set for a limited December 30 release from Sony Pictures Classics.
The film ceners on the strange events happening at a rural school in the north of Germany during the year 1913, which seem to be ritual punishment. Does this affect the school system, and how does the school have an influence on fascism?
Check out the international trailer directly below and see what you think. Any Haneke fans out there that have any suggestions where I should start when it comes to the helmer's prior works?
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- Brad Brevet
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