Great Movies
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The Master Lets Go: On the Career of Daniel Day-Lewis
A look at the entire career of Daniel Day-Lewis and how his work in "Phantom Thread" feels like the perfect finale.
A look at the entire career of Daniel Day-Lewis and how his work in "Phantom Thread" feels like the perfect finale.
Matt writes: Just yesterday, the winners in RogerEbert.com's recent giveaway were announced. Each of them received a copy of The Great Movies IV, the final installment in Roger Ebert's collection of essays analyzing some of the greatest achievements in cinema. Chaz Ebert's article revealing the winners also included the book's foreword written by Matt Zoller Seitz.
Melika Bass chats with Michael Glover Smith; Drawing away clichés; Franklin Leonard's Hollywood list; On the set of "The Last Picture Show"; Distillation process of adaptation.
Matt writes: Legendary French New Wave icon Agnès Varda was honored at the third annual Ebert Tribute ceremony during this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Brian Tallerico covered the event at RogerEbert.com, while Chaz Ebert assisted in putting together a Roger Favorites entry on Varda, compiling Roger's reviews of the director's work. Roger felt that Varda's 2008 film, "The Beaches of Agnès," contained “the most poetic shot about the cinema” that he had ever seen, in which “two old fishermen, who were young when she first filmed them, watch themselves on a screen” mounted on “an old market cart that they push through the nighttime streets of their village.”
Marie writes: If I have a favorite festival, it's SXSW and which is actually a convergence of film, music and emerging technologies. However it's the festival's penchant for screening "quirky" Indie movies which really sets my heart pounding and in anticipation of seeing the next Wes Anderson or Charlie Kaufman. So from now until March, I'll be tracking down the best with the zeal of a Jack Russell terrier! Especially since learning that Joss Whedon's modern B/W take on Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" is set to screen at SXSW 2013 in advance of its June 21st US release date; they'll cut an official trailer soon, rubbing hands together!
Los Angeles is a behemoth or, better, an octopus, with tentacles stretching 468.67 square miles, a fact that shocked me when I moved here in 1990. That meant that it was bigger than the distance consumed by driving to and from Chicago from my hometown, Kewanee (150 miles southwest), and back again. I soon realized that one could easily live an entire lifetime in Los Angeles and never see it all. This also meant that so much was always going on, including really desirable events, many of which would most certainly be missed.
Marie writes: Recently, a fellow artist and friend sent me the following photos featuring amazing glass mosaics. She didn't know who the artists were however - and which set me off on a journey to find out! I confess, the stairs currently continue to thwart me and thus remain a mystery, but I did uncover who created the "glass bottle doorway" and was surprised to learn both its location and the inspiration behind it. (click image.)
It's a sunny, unseasonable 80 degrees as the 2012 Santa Barbara International Film Festival kicks in, but all I want is to be indoors. When you peer at a schedule listing nearly 200 films jammed into 10 days, and you just can't wait, you know you're an addict. This is my third SBIFF so I recognize the signs.
Suddenly each January, there's an extra bustle in this appealing, laid-back town. Downtown on lower State Street, trucks appear bearing vivid banners, soon to be festooned overhead. Special lights and rigging go up at 2 central venues - the precisely restored, historic Lobero and Arlington Theatres. Locals watch to see whether Festival Director Roger Durling changes his hair: one year it was spikey, another year purple. This time it's rather like Heathcliff - longer, romantic.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Complete list of 84th Annual Academy Award nominations announced Tuesday:
Last year was the Year of the Hobbit at the Academy Awards. This year the academy will move away from the land of blockbusters and honor a film whose budget was less than the cost of the opening week's ads for just one-third of the "Rings" trilogy. Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby," which seemed to appear out of nowhere in mid-December, which had no pre-release publicity, which played no festivals and was screened for no focus groups, will win the Oscar as best picture.
Among the influential awards and honors we will be tracking here:
"The Aviator" leads with 11 nominations. Jamie Foxx was nominated in two categories. A little film named "Sideways" won five nominations, but one of them was not for its star, Paul Giamatti. "Finding Neverland" was the dark horse, in a tie with "Million Dollar Baby" with seven nominations apiece.
January 24, 2005: The nominees for the 77th Academy Awards were announced this morning, and the "The Aviator" received a leading 11 Academy Award nominations.
TORONTO -- "Hotel Rwanda," a film that left its audiences shaken with its portrait of genocide in Africa, won the People's Choice Award here Sunday as the audience favorite at the 29th Toronto International Film Festival.
TORONTO -- Moviegoers at this festival who have seen "Hotel Rwanda" talk about it in a hushed tone, and their eyes turn away as if remembering the images. (One person I know walked out of the theater and skipped her next movie and went back to her hotel room and cried.) Here is a film about a brave and good man, but it is also a howl of rage against the crimes of men against men.
