by Ron Swanson
I don’t cry very much. Or rather, I don’t cry very much in the first person. Something bad happens to me, I bite my bottom lip, stiffen my resolve and wallow in a tearless self-pity. However, I realised that I might be hiding from my own true nature when an advert for Google made me cry. For the fifth time. In a week.
by Indy Datta
So, when Billy Crystal wasn’t blacking up, he was making mildly tasteless jokes about Kodak’s bankruptcy, thus giving hacks on right wing rags another weak excuse to write about how Hollywood hates America. The rumours of the death of film are, if not exaggerated, a little premature – 7 of this year’s 9 (nine) Best Picture nominees were shot on Kodak film, and next year’s batch could well include the latest from high profile digital refuseniks like PT Anderson, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and Terence Malick. But it’s true that nobody’s making film cameras any more, and that almost all exhibition will be digital very soon (More than one studio is withdrawing archive film prints from circulation). David Bordwell, over on his blog, has an interesting series of entries about the massive transition that the industry is undergoing, and the surprising challenges this generates (all the tagged posts don’t show up on the one page here, by the way, you need to hit “earlier posts” for the whole thing). Some of it, in my opinion, is unduly doomy and apocalyptic (and you’ll forgive me for not really caring if the future cockroach overlords of the Earth can’t figure out how to get the data off a DVD), but it’s an interesting read (and should keep you busy for hours; don’t ever tell me I don’t give you enough links, and that the title of this column is in some way misleading).
by Ron Swanson
One of cinema’s most beloved and iconic films, Casablanca will be in selected cinemas in time for Valentine’s Day. The re-release is to mark the 70th anniversary of a film whose reputation has never dimmed. A winner of three Academy Awards – Best Picture, Best Director for Michael Curtiz and Best Writing – Casablanca is revered as one of cinema’s greatest, most indelible romances. In 2007, the American Film Institute voted it the third greatest film of all time, behind only Citizen Kane (1941) and The Godfather (1972).
by Susan Patterson
This week Mostly Links, like everyone else, is pondering the Oscars nominees. The Catalans are consoling themselves over their disappointment that Pa Negre (Black Bread) didn’t make it into the final five for Best Foreign Language Film, with the two nominations they did get. Continue reading Mostly Links
by Philip Concannon
How does cinema react to a tragedy as enormous as the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11th this year? Director Koichi Omiya reacted to the disaster in the simplest way possible; he visited Tohoku and pointed his camera at a town destroyed. The Sketch of Mujo is a 75-minute documentary that captures the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, as piles of wreckage sit where houses once stood and families begin the arduous process of rebuilding their lives. He holds his camera steady on scenes of utter devastation and allows us time to pick out resonant details – an upturned car on the roof of a two-storey house, a child’s toy amid the rubble of a former nursery – and he speaks to residents who discuss their woes with philosophical outlook, and a staunch resilience. “A belief in mujo is at the centre of Japanese life,” a Buddhist priest tells us, mujo being the Japanese word for transience or impermanence, and The Sketch of Mujo successfully evokes the way this entire region was altered in an instant, both on a widespread and personal level.
by Clare Dean
Pandemonium and chaos. When I arrive at the Odeon West End for the opening night of this year’s London Korean Film Festival, the queue is already around the block. The foyer is a mass of confusion, camera crews and big, burly security men and it appears that Kim Han-min’s new film, War of the Arrows is quite the hot ticket. So much so, that the boisterousness gives way to blagging, pleading and queue jumping.
As is often the case with festivals, the start is delayed a little. The audience slowly take their seats, filling screen 2. 15 minutes pass. Suddenly a wave of shrill screaming breaks out across the cinema. It takes me a few seconds to remember that K-Pop band, SHINee played earlier in the day – and the reason for the delays, crowds and screaming becomes clear. Every head in the room turns, cameras are out, people are standing on their seats. Three girls make a break for it and clamber on the stage. I stand up too, worried that I won’t know who to look at: but it’s obvious – five young Korean men with extravagant hair saunter down the aisle and coolly take their seats. The screaming continues, the burly security men look fraught. One even has his finger to his ear piece, (just like in the movies!).
Eventually, festival advisor Tony Rayns appears on stage to calm everyone down with a video introduction from Jonathan Ross and open the festival. Finally, we watch a film.
by Indy Datta
Movie awards season has started, then, with the announcement over the last couple of weeks of the nominations for the British Independent Film Awards and the European Film Awards. Pretty much every week between now and the Oscars in February will bring more awards season news, and Mostly Links will be there on the spot, bringing you the latest, until it gets too boring. Talking points from the BIFAs included the freezing out of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights and Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea, and the sweep of nominations for StudioCanal’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Far be it from Mostly Links to note that, if Tinker Tailor is considered a valid nominee for an indie film award, presumably anything short of the new Harry Potter is eligible. On the EFA side of things, is the best picture nomination for The Artist just the start of its triumphant march towards Oscar, or is it more notable that it didn’t get nods for direction or screenplay?
by Spank the Monkey
Here’s a terrifying statistic for you. Last weekend – to be precise, the weekend starting Friday September 30th – eighteen films were released theatrically in the UK. They covered everything from Taylor Lautner’s first attempt at a leading role, via the new Lars von Trier, to a 3D documentary about cane toads. The weekly review pages were positively wheezing trying to fit that lot in. But how many of them are you likely to see at your local multiplex? Certainly not all 18.
So you end up with the scenario that I encountered just one week earlier. A horror comedy flick, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, was released to generally favourable reviews. The buzz piqued my interest, so I scanned the listings for it. Sadly, it looked like it would be close to impossible to see the film in my town.
My town, by the way, is called London. So what’s going on here?
MostlyFilm 