RUPERT!!! delete tweet!
My favourite moment of 2012 has already occurred. This is going to be so much easier than 2011.
LFF review: We Need to Talk about Kevin
From Netribution:
Warning: spoilers (as far as I can spoil the plot of a very famous 8-year-old book for you)
Ah. “We need to talk about Kevin.” The words that the eponymous Kevin (Ezra Miller/Jasper Newell/ Rocky Duer)’s mother Eva (Tilda Swinton) never manages to say to her sweet, blinkered husband Franklin (John C Reilly).
Lynne Ramsay‘s fine adaptation of the very unloveable 2003 novel dispenses with the epistolary form of the original, and is instead structured around Eva’s life post-massacre, with flashes of the past forcing continually pushing to the surface. Kevin’s actions have defined her current situation; the film shows us how.
LFF review: Shame
From Netribution:
Artist/director Steve McQueen’s second feature (following 2008′s Hunger), follows the unravelling New York existence of sex addict Brandon (Michael Fassbender). Living alone, he (seemingly) happily picks up girls in bars, orders prostitutes like takeout and masturbates in the work loos after watching porn on his computer. It’s a tad compulsive, but his outward charm and ability to just about hold it together is keeping people fooled.
Then, his volatile, attention-seeking sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) turns up to stay in his apartment, and things slowly fall apart.
Things people have googled about Amanda Knox this week…
LFF opens with Fernando Meirelles’ 360
From Netribution
The 55th BFI London Film Festival opens tonight!
Oh. Fernando Meirelles. This is no City of God. This isn’t even Love Actually.
On the Newspocalypse of 2011
This is in order of my memory’s workings, not in order of importance.
Pakistan: Obama tracks Osama Bin Laden down and has him assassinated.
Libya: Gaddafi’s statue defaced as he remains in hiding.
Japan: Suffers earthquake and tsunami.
USA: Beyoncé announces her pregnancy.
Review: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The interiors of this latest adaptation of John Le Carré’s 1973-set novel look and feel like just like the those of the BBC’s recent drama series, The Hour, set in their 1956 newsroom. Even the plots are alike – there’s a Russian spy in our very English midst, which one is he (it’s never gonna be a she)?
The main clues as to which era we’re in are found outside – the odd black or Asian person popping up in the corner of a frame, a girl in hotpants, the lovely cars. Inside the Circus [the highest level of British intelligence], though, it’s all closed and brownish and peopled by grey men. The Cold War is still very much on, and this film sets the scene expertly.
55th BFI London Film Festival programme revealed
From the British Film Institute:
We’re excited to announce the line-up for this year’s BFI London Film Festival, which will showcase 204 feature films and 110 shorts over 16 days.
In addition to our previously announced opening and closing night films, Fernando Meirelles’ 360 and Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea [pictured above, starring Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston], Gala highlights include George Clooney’s The Ides of March, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method. This year’s Archive Gala title is the BFI National Archive’s restoration of Miles Mander’s The First Born with a new score by Stephen Horne.
On pop culture references
So, there was this article, suggesting that frequent referencing of pop culture / contemporary events (I just tried to write ‘contemporanea’, but the internet reliably informs that this is not a word) gives TV shows, and, by extension, other art forms, “a lack of durability.” Are ” ‘footnote shows’,” as the writer Matt Zoller Seitz puts it, “– programs built around references that feel universal and timeless to viewers of a certain age only because it’s what they grew up with,” a thing to worry about?
I’m wading into this debate about 600 internet years late, let’s see if I can even understand what the blazes they’ve been writing about…
The Way We Go
Saw this on the tube today. Loved it.
