Cracks
Directed by Jordan Scott
The opening scene of Cracks is very Madchen in Uniform, as the innocent 1930s school girls stuck on a remote English island sing their hymns, awaiting the arrival of the figurehead: Miss G, the striking, eyeliner-wearing cool teacher, the one the girls all have a pash for, especially head girl Di. But [...]
A Serious Man
Directed by Joel Coen
The Coens are getting positively prolific these days, treating their hardcore fans with a movie a year, and with their latest release, A Serious Man they have taken the comedic strand of their work into uncharted waters to deliver possibly their most haunting and certainly their most personal work to [...]
The trailer for Nowhere Boy, a film based on the teenage years of the Beatles’ John Lennon, debuted this week, just days before its premiere at the London Film Festival. The movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, was filmed in Lennon’s boyhood city of Liverpool and stars British actor Aaron Johnson as Lennon. The film is [...]
The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival announced its winners at the high profile awards ceremony held at London’s Inner Temple this evening. Hosted by journalist and broadcaster, Paul Gambaccini, the six awards were presented by some of the most respected figures in the film world.
BEST FILM
In recognition of original, intelligent and distinctive filmmaking, the [...]
Screen Plays: How 25 Screenplays Made it to a Theatre Near You – For Better or Worse
David S. Cohen, HarperCollins 2008.
From the onset, Screen Plays looks like promising reading material for screenwriters and others interested in how screenplays make it from paper to screen. Cohen’s credits are respectable, and the promise of “valuable insider access [...]
Land of the Dead
Directed by George A. Romero
Although the fourth installment in George A. Romero’s influential zombie series may not have the overall impact of the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead, 2004 entry Land of the Dead proves that after four nearly four decades, he’s still got the undead touch. The horror maestro has come [...]
Some people don’t like the first Dune by David Lynch, but of course, they’re crazy. With a stunning cast like the effortless Kyle MacLachlan, badass Sting, the mysterious Jürgen Prochnow, the black-goop-dripping Kenneth McMillan, the incomparable Linda Hunt as Shadout Mapes…coupled with the as-cool-and-strange-as-it-gets-for-1984 effects, not to mention the storyline itself… come on, it rocks!
So [...]
Avatar, James Cameron’s $200 million dollar sci-fi epic and the first feature film he’s directed since Titanic, has been surrounded by much hype, anticipation, and now controversy. Sci-fi fans and film bloggers are calling into question Cameron’s ethics as discussions of plagiarism start to make the rounds on the web. [...]
The Informant!
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
You can’t keep a good executive down. After ENRON, after Lehman Brothers and the continuing fury at executive bonuses it was quite a change to see the corporate executive class as brimming with ineffective buffoons rather than coldly calculated capitalist psychopaths, in The Informant! Matt Damon stars as the amiable Mark [...]
In 1968, director George A. Romero transformed cinematic zombies from a bunch of brain-damaged Haitians working on farms to a cannibalistic apocalyptic plague with Night of the Living Dead. The influential film was also helped solidify horror as a genre which filmmakers could experiment with fantasy as social allegory, draping metaphor in flayed skin and [...]
In the past ten years MODERNCINÉ has been dedicated to making high-quality, groundbreaking and edgy horror films avoiding clichés and complacency in favor of original ideas and memorable performances. Founded by Andrew van den Houten during his college years, Andrew began producing and directing a number of award-winning short films including the 2005 multiple award [...]
In 1968, director George A. Romero transformed cinematic zombies from a bunch of brain-damaged Haitians working on farms to a cannibalistic apocalyptic plague with Night of the Living Dead. The influential film was also helped solidify horror as a genre which filmmakers could experiment with fantasy as social allegory, draping metaphor in flayed skin and [...]
With Halloween looming, Ricky, Al and Simon take the opportunity to catch up on two recent supernaturally-inclined movies, as well as one ’80s chestnut that recently got the neutered, PG-13 remake treatment. New in theaters: the word-of-mouth phenom Paranormal Activity, made on eleven grand and beating out Saw VI at the box office, and book [...]
Now that it’s finally hit DVD, Sound on Sight takes a long-delayed look at a documentary that some are lauding as one of the year’s best: Anvil: The Story of Anvil, which chronicles its titular Toronto metal band as they attempt to stage an ambitious European comeback tour after years of complete obscurity. To tie [...]
It worked for one seemingly flagging sci-fi franchise, why not another?
Apparently, George Miller is taking a page from J.J. Abram’s revisionist book in hopes of rebooting the Aussie action saga he created with his Mad Max trilogy, soon to become a quartet. It remains to be seen whether this latest “mad” installment will be [...]
