Another look at The Wrestler (2008)
What Follows is the third in an ongoing series of occasional long form essays. The film trailer. It is a necessary evil of the film industry, in that a director’s work can not only be made or broken within the 3 minutes of expertly cut promotional footage, but it can be spoiled, it can be … Read more
Initial Thoughts on Reisz’s The Gambler…
The second Cineastes project is due on Monday, so with that in mind I took an early look at the film in question. That film is Karel Reisz’s The Gambler, an adaptation of the Dostoevsky novel that transports the source material to 1970′s New York. The James Caan starring vehicle unfortunately failed to impress on … Read more
Tartuffe (1925)
In the year between his well known classics Der Letzte Mann (1924) and Faust(1926), Friedrick Wilhelm Murnau produced Tartuffe. Historically deemed a minor piece in Murnau’s body of work, I find it hard to empaphise with those who deem this to be an unfair assessment. While the film is not particularly terrible it lacks the … Read more
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
The most well known of recent adaptations of Bram Stoker’s lasting novel, Francis Ford Coppola’s take on the story is a visually rich, yet ultimately shallow affair. Visually we are reminded of Coppola’s One From The Heart, in the respect that a lot of the effects are practical in nature. Coppola resorts to using prosphetics, … Read more
Terminator Salvation (2009)
Possibly the most confused and dull film of the summer McG’s McTerminator starts in a blaze of boredom and carries the pace consistently. The film wasn’t particularly bad, it just wasn’t very much. At times the photography (and indeed editing pace) was wonderful, in spite of the fact that most of the idea’s were stolen … Read more
Thief (1981)
Michael Mann’s debut proper 1981′s James Caan starring Thief is a fantastic debut, and one that is incredibly telling of things to come from Mann. It was also pretty much the end of the road for Caan as a viable leading man, and the subject matter actually works rather well as a bookend of sorts. Caan … Read more
The Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Perhaps the most notable film of the neo-realist movement, Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves is as emotionally involving as its story is simple. Enormously successful upon its release, being that it achieved huge commercial and critical success outside of its native Italy, the film has remained a perenial favourite of viewers and scholars alike … Read more
My-Graine.
Hey guys, I have been attempting to finish a piece on The Bicycle Thieves for the best part of the day, alas I am practically bedridden with migraine and have been put on mac-grounding for the rest of the day. I shall finish it tomorrow, alongside the similarly titled Thief by Michael Mann. Adam
The HopeLiesList – June 2009
Welcome to June’s update of the hopelieslist. We finally hit 200 this month, and I hope that you will agree that the list is shaping up to look rather quite something. I’m going to place the list in a seperate page on the site too, as it gets way too lost by the end of … Read more
