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Philip Seymour Hoffman: 'Fame isn't the reason why I act'
Friday, 14 November 2008
His latest role as a hypochondriac facing a mid-life crisis is arguably Philip Seymour Hoffman's most ambitious to date. But nothing fazes him more than the pitfalls of stardom, finds James Mottram
Dawn of the dead dames
Friday, 14 November 2008
The new trend for 'slashcoms' featuring female zombies and vampires seems to put women in control. But is the joke really on the witless male protagonists? In any case, Rosamund Witcher is not amused
The Diary: Clint Eastwood; Babylon; Imagine This; Boni Sones
Friday, 14 November 2008
Keeping it clean
Hollyweird: Francis The Talking Mule
Friday, 14 November 2008
WC Fields may have advised his fellow-actors never to work with animals or children, but it seems that nobody passed it on to Donald O'Connor, best known for his performance alongside Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.
Warner Brothers- heaven and hell on earth
Friday, 14 November 2008
Warner Brothers has a reputation for making gritty dramas with a social conscience, but the bigger picture is much more complex – starting with a dog called Rin Tin Tin. Geoffrey Macnab weighs the evidence
The Word On... Pride and Glory
Friday, 14 November 2008
"The final 15 minutes are so awful that it's difficult to believe that the bulk of the film is decent. Some movies can survive a bad climax well enough to receive a recommendation. 'Pride and Glory' is not among their number." - James Berardinelli, www.reelviews.net
Sheffield's documentary festival: Reflections in a dark mirror
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
If you can't afford a ticket to ride around the world, there is another way. You can tour the craters of Baghdad, the swelling skylines of China, and the mud villages of Senegal from a cinema seat at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival.
Watch It! Doc/Fest: The Time of their Lives
Monday, 10 November 2008
This is why I like festivals. A film we commissioned about very, very old ladies in a home for the active elderly, all Jewish, authors, therapists, bluestockings, campaihers, walkers, is shown in a small, packed room. It is as good as I had hoped. The audience love it.
Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri: France's funniest film-comedy duo
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Who bickers as amusingly as the misfits and fools in Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri's comedies? Well, the pair tell Jonathan Romney, they can think of one couple...
One Click Wonder : W
Sunday, 9 November 2008
'W', Oliver Stone’s chronicle of the life and times of George ‘Dubya’ Bush has hit the big screens this weekend. Here we round up five of the most impressive impersonations, spoofs and parodies of the outgoing president
My daughter Keira Knightley
Saturday, 8 November 2008
As their collaboration on the Dylan Thomas biopic 'The Edge of Love' is released on DVD, the screenwriter Sharman Macdonald talks about what is was like to raise a movie star
Russell Crowe: "Angry? Me? Never"
Friday, 7 November 2008
It's family bliss for Russell Crowe now, but he'll raise hell in roles as a CIA agent and Robin Hood. He talks to Gill Pringle
Observations: Artistes of the pistes
Friday, 7 November 2008
"When it's cold and snowing, others run inside, but children of winter do the opposite." So says Max Bervy, director of Children of Winter Never Grow Old, this year's Warren Miller film, an annual cinematic celebration of the opening of the winter sports season. Now 84 years old and retired, Miller, the pioneer of the athletic film genre, embarked on his career after being discharged from the Navy in 1946. He used his $100 mustering-out pay to buy an 8mm camera, with which he and a friend filmed themselves to improve their on-piste technique. He went on to become the world's most enduring and prolific maker of ski films, producing more than 100 mountain movies.
Channelling Coco Chanel
Friday, 7 November 2008
From Audrey Tautou as the young Coco in a film, to Shirley MacLaine as the older Chanel on television, and with a third biopic en route, the legendary couturier is still making her stylish presence felt. By Rachel Shields
Hollyweird: Florence Lawrence
Friday, 7 November 2008
Despite appearing in nearly 300 films, the woman generally regarded as the world's first movie star has become a forgotten character in the history of Hollywood.
The Word On...Quantum of Solace
Friday, 7 November 2008
"The set pieces and action sequences are excellent, even if the fight scenes and chase scenes seem closely modelled on the Bourne movies." - Matthew Turner, www.viewlondon.co.uk
Jessica Biel: 'I fight against prejudice every day'
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Jessica Biel has two men in her life at the moment – Justin Timberlake and Noël Coward. But as James Mottram discovers, she only wants to talk about one of them
Make me a mogul: Can celebrities succeed behind the camera
Monday, 3 November 2008
Fashion designer Tom Ford is about to start work on his latest creation – a Hollywood movie. But can celebrities from other fields ever really succeed behind the camera?
Thandie Newton: 'Condi was my hardest role ever'
Friday, 31 October 2008
Bafta winner Thandie Newton's latest role sees her playing Condoleezza Rice in Oliver Stone's George Bush biopic 'W' – but don't expect to see a lookalike, she tells Sian Lewis
The greatest docu-show on earth
Friday, 31 October 2008
This is a key moment for film documentary. As the global players gather in Sheffield for the Independent-sponsored Doc/Fest, it is clear that Britain leads the field – but, warns Simon Usborne, the hits may dry up if funding falls foul of the credit crunch
Why Irish protestants are hungry for a voice
Friday, 31 October 2008
There have been many Troubles movies sympathetic to the Republican point of view, but none to that of the Unionists. Why is this? David McKittrick suggests that Protestants have a public relations problem
How a documentary became a real Thrilla
Friday, 31 October 2008
Muhammad Ali is universally revered, as a boxer and as a human being. Pretty much any list of the biggest stars in sporting history will have Ali in top spot, the "greatest of all time", as the man himself would say.
Five documentaries that broke the mould
Friday, 31 October 2008
Housing Problems by Sir Arthur Elton (1935)'Housing Problems' was the first step towards cinéma verité film-making. It wasn't itself verité, but it was the first film that saw real people giving interviews, and the first time people were interviewed on location (in this case, their kitchen).
Naomi Wolf: 'I just watched the film-makers work their magic'
Friday, 31 October 2008
Naomi Wolf wrote The End of America, a searing indictment of George Bush's 'fascist tactics'. Now, it's been made into an equally uncompromising documentary
The Diary: Poster pilfering
Friday, 31 October 2008
The marketing department at the Barbican has, it appears, become the victim of its own success. Its latest poster campaign on the London Underground has been such a hit with passing commuters that the striking black-and-white portraits of this season's performers have been going missing at a rapid rate.
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The Independent Film Forum
This week's Independent Film Forum looks at 'Lesbian Vampire Killers'. Have your say on the film
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FIVE BEST FILMS
Il Divo, 15
Paolo Sorrentino’s terrific film presents an extraordinarily sinister portrait of Giulio Andreotti, Italy’s most significant politician of the post-war era. As incarnated by Toni Servillo, Andreotti appears not so much an eminence grise as a black hole.
Nationwide
Wendy and Lucy , 15
Michelle Williams, with page-boy haircut and a martyrishly sad face, is quite lovely in this extremely low-key but very touching humanist drama about hardship and a modern-day hobo’s search for her missing dog.
Limited release
Bronson, 18
An original and pacy portrait of Charles Bronson, a violent sociopath who has spent most of his adult life in solitary confinement. Tom Hardy gives what ought to be a career-making performance.
Nationwide
The Class, 15
The winner of the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes festival is a remarkable piece of naturalistic film-making, set over the course of a school year in a racially mixed classroom of boisterous and endearing adolescents in an inner-city Paris high school.
Nationwide
Not Quite Hollywood, 18
Informative and very funny documentary charting the history of Ozploitation, a forgotten strand of exploitation cinema that was concurrent with the Australian New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s, but had rather more nudity, mayhem and gore.
Limited release