Features
Inside Features
Scene stealer: The aXXo files
Monday, 29 December 2008
To Hollywood executives, he's public enemy number one. To film fans around the world, he's a modern-day Robin Hood. As the internet's most prolific pirate makes his 1,000th illegal film download available to the masses, Tim Walker investigates the mysterious figure known only as aXXo
Want to be a star? How MySpace made a movie
Monday, 29 December 2008
They wrote the script, directed the action and played supporting roles – MySpace users have created a truly democratic feature film. Elisa Bray enjoys a glimpse of the future
R D Laing: The celebrity shrink who put the psychedelia into psychiatry
Monday, 29 December 2008
R D Laing was idolised by 1960s hedonists and demonised by conservatives. A new film will tell his extraordinary story
Che way: Steven Soderbergh on how to play a famous historical character
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Benicio Del Toro is stepping into the shoes of Che Guevara. But how does an actor bring a great historical figure to life? Here, Steven Soderbergh, the 'Che' director, reveals his favourite period performances, from the camp to the downright insane
Pinter: True star of the screen
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Rare among playwrights, Harold Pinter proved as adept at writing for the cinema as for the theatre.
The actress: Rebecca Hall
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Last May, at the Cannes press conference for Woody Allen's new film, all the talk was of Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson, until journalists started to ask, "Who's the English actress?" That actress is Rebecca Hall, and she comprehensively steals the show in Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She plays an uptight American abroad, and her spiky performance has earned her a nomination in the forthcoming Golden Globes. Cannes exposure was a heady experience for 26-year-old Hall, but it wasn't her first screen success. She made her film debut in the 2006 Britcom Starter for 10, then made a strong impression in The Prestige.
The film-makers: Christine Molloy & Joe Lawlor
Saturday, 27 December 2008
The words "British cinema" and "art film" don't usually go together. But 2008 brought a surprise renaissance for idiosyncratic, highly crafted, defiantly non-mainstream UK-made films, from such names as Terence Davies (Of Time and the City), the artist Steve McQueen (Hunger) and the newcomers Joanna Hogg (Unrelated) and Duane Hopkins (Better Things). Next in line is the duo of Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor.
Culture: Pirates have stolen my film
Sunday, 21 December 2008
What is the most ambitious public project ever undertaken? Creating the National Health Service? Putting a man on the moon? Building the Channel Tunnel? All of these are child's play compared with a joint initiative that has just been unveiled by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA) and the UK Film Council. It is their aim to make London completely free of film piracy by 2012.
Tom Cruise and the world of 'E-meter'-wielding Scientologists
Sunday, 21 December 2008
When Ian Halperin went undercover to investigate the lives of struggling actors in Hollywood, he soon found himself in a world of 'E-meter'-wielding Scientologists...
Films that showed us the world
Friday, 19 December 2008
Iranian cartoonists, Swedish vampires and Bombay brainboxes – when we asked film-makers and industry figures for their picks of the year they went global
Sir Ian McKellen: The Bard and me
Friday, 19 December 2008
Sir Ian McKellen's performances in Shakespeare's tragedies will be a highlight of Christmas television this year. So why does he get no pleasure from watching them?
Observations: The top parties of 2008
Friday, 19 December 2008
1. He even makes a sling look cool: Daniel Craig and Satsuki Mitchell attend the Quantum of Solace party at Battersea Power Station.
Mickey Rooney: The Mickey show
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Mickey Rooney has eight wives and 320 films to his name. So why is the 'greatest actor America has ever seen' playing second fiddle to Bobby Davro in a West Country panto? Nick Duerden is granted an audience
Hunter S Thompson: Trust him, he's a doctor
Sunday, 14 December 2008
We know about the drugs, the guns and the 'gonzo' writing. But as a new documentary reminds us, Hunter S Thompson had another crazy ambition: political office
Wodehouse goes to Hollywood
Saturday, 13 December 2008
In 1930, Britain's best-loved comic novelist left for Hollywood to write for the movies. It was not a resounding success. While researching a new play, Tony Staveacre uncovered a treasure trove of lost scripts, extravagant paychecks, unpublished letters and scandalous interviews
Benicio Del Toro: Viva la revolution!
Friday, 12 December 2008
Benicio Del Toro emerged from the Bolivian jungle to critical applause for his portrayal of Che Guevara, but, he tells Chris Sullivan, the five-hour, two-part film is more than just a biopic, it is a testament to American tolerance
The Word On... Lakeview Terrace
Friday, 12 December 2008
"Even though it seriously drops the ball three-quarters of the way through, 'Lakeview Terrace' is an intriguing and provocative thriller that manages to find more than one way to make you squirm in your seat."
Brightest young things: The next generation of stars recreate famous roles
Thursday, 11 December 2008
You may not recognise them now, but these young British actors could be tomorrow's movie superstars. Alice Jones introduces the faces of the future – and they recreate their favourite moments from the silver screen
Could you make a movie for £100,000?
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Aspiring British directors are getting the chance to do just that. And the striking results are coming to a cinema near you
3D films: the next film revolution?
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
They've been the next big thing for the past 50 years, but 3D films have finally come of age. Just the thing to get bums on seats, says Chris Evans
The manifesto that laid movies bare
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
With Dogme 95, four Danish directors reduced film to its powerful best. And more than a decade on, they’re still winning awards. By Kaleem Aftab
Will 'Inkheart' become the next 'Harry Potter'?
Saturday, 6 December 2008
Real and magical worlds collide in a screen adaptation of the next big children's fantasy
Out of the hood, into the East End
Friday, 5 December 2008
There should be more to urban cinema than drugs, crime and violence. It's time for UK film-makers to find their own voice, urges Kaleem Aftab
Entering the Twilight zone
Friday, 5 December 2008
The $69m box office success of Catherine Hardwicke's sexy teenage vampire film bodes well for the stream of blood-soaked movies that are set to follow in its wake, writes James Mottram
Nicole Kidman: 'I've been through a lot in my life'
Friday, 5 December 2008
Elaine Lipworth: Baz Luhrmann's epic Australia is a spectacular homecoming for the actress
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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