Don’t Think Twice, It’s Insane, or: When the Communal Viewing Experience Goes Wrong
The Grove in Los Angeles is a lot of things to a lot of people. More precisely, it is meant to be everything to everybody. The sprawling, 575,000-square foot, open-air marketplace offers an alternative to Main Street, Costco, the Internet or any sort of reality existing beyond the confines of a price-tag. I mean no [...]
Sacred Monsters – Bronson v. Statham
At the height of his mid-1970s cinematic celebrity, Charles Bronson was known in movie-mad France as “Le Sacre Monstre,” or “The Sacred Monster.” It’s a strange sentiment, but an appealing one. Bronson was the archetypal action hero of the 70s, but he couldn’t seem more atypical by 21st century standards. He had a face and [...]
TFT DVD/Digital Media/Miscellaneous Delivery Report: Kurosawa Birthday
It’s Akira Kurosawa’s 100th birthday – and to mark the occasion our next episode will feature a discussion with your genial co-hosts about ‘Yojimbo’, what may be his most entertaining film. I took a look at the new Criterion Blu-Ray at the weekend (it’s released today, along with its companion piece ‘Sanjuro’), and was instantly [...]
Blue Light, Red Light: Paris, Texas and the Redemption of a Man
* Note: This post is so full of spoilers it’s almost ridiculous – so only read the first paragraph if you haven’t seen the film yet. It’s also more of a personal review than I might otherwise write, mostly because ‘Paris, Texas’ has been resonating deeply with me since I first saw it about 15 [...]
TFT 108 – THAT EVENING SUN and an Interview with its Director Scott Teems
This Episode is Now Available Only to Members – Click Here to Find Out Why DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: THAT EVENING SUN / HAL HOLBROOK / SCOTT TEEMS / RAY MCKINNON / WALTON GOGGINS / RODNEY TAYLOR / ASK THE FILM TALK / CAPRICORN ONE / THE BLIND SIDE
Christmas Day Shocker! Sherlock Holmes Actually Entertains!
Hey there folks – Jett here. Hope everyone out there is having a happy and healthy holidays. Couple of things: I’m assuming the Criterion Collection remark to my left is Gareth’s idea of a joke – I see that he’s put an asterisk at the end of the sentence but does not reference it elsewhere [...]
Arthur's Easy to Like
The Feet of Rawiri Paratene *Continuing Gareth’s posts from the set of ‘The Insatiable Moon’, Auckland, New Zealand. Rawiri (Ra) Paratene is one of the most respected New Zealand actors, known to international audiences as the angry grandfather Koro in ‘Whale Rider’; it’s been a privilege to watch him work on the set of ‘The [...]
TFT 104 – THE FILMS OF THE DECADE
TFT 104 / 28 mb MP3 / 58 minutes / DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: THE FOUNTAIN / AMORES PERROS / QUANTUM OF SOLACE AUSTRALIA / MIAMI VICE / GANGS OF NEW YORK THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA THE VILLAGE / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The Insatiable Moon: One of the Best Films of Next Year?
I’m going to turn 35 in January, which feels old enough to consider myself a man, inexperienced enough to still feel irresponsible; halfway to still being younger than Warren Beatty, alive enough to reflect on what really matters. And what really matters? Friendship. If, as my amazing friend John O’Donohue often said, our identities are [...]
Clint Eastwood's Moral Imagination and Why Glenn Beck Should Read More Speeches
It’s that time of year again – you know, when Clint Eastwood releases a trailer for a movie that looks fascinating and completely different from the last thing he did, and your triple reactions run something like this: 1: Hmmm, Clint’s got a movie coming out – didn’t we just see ‘Gran Torino’ five minutes [...]
Escapism Preview #4: Flash Gordon, The Goonies, Return to Oz, Back to the Future
The Queen of an Imaginary Land Yesterday was fantastic, a genuine surprise – ‘Superman’ is as close to a perfect version of its particular story as you could imagine; ‘The Black Hole’ looks astonishing and sounds awful – who knows what they were trying to do, but one can certainly imagine Disney not being all [...]
Escapism Preview #3: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
I haven’t seen ‘It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World’, because when it would show up on holiday TV schedules I was usually playing with my new toys or trying to find batteries for them, so I never had three unbroken hours. But today, Jett and I are going to give our Saturday afternoon over [...]
'I'm Up to My Neck in Being an American, whether I Like it or Not'
Wallace Shawn – you know, Wallace Shawn, man of wit and letters, agreeable suppers with theatre directors, and potentially poisoned cups of mead, has some things to say about life. Haymarket Books have gathered his elegant essays in a book (remarkably enough it’s titled ‘Essays‘) which turns out to be one of the wisest and [...]
The Michael Mann Movie before There Was A Michael Mann: 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle'
Cris-crossing two-timing cops and robbers. Worn out old pros. Finks, snitches, the snitch and the snitchee. Crime capers so detailed, so clear and framed so fantastic they’re a how-to manual for those on the slippery slope. ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ is a Michael Mann film before there was a Michael Mann. It’s a 70′s [...]
Better the Devil You Know: What I Learned from Satan in the Movies
I’ve spent a monumentally pleasurable afternoon in the presence of Satan; in the form of the ridiculous and wonderful performance that Walter Huston (above) gives in ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’, a film about American history and the mythopoetics of the Yankee soul that deserves to be compared with ‘Citizen Kane’ (and not just because [...]
Who's the Best Impersonator of Orson Welles?
Inspired by the realisation that there is yet another film that features a fictionalised Orson Welles I’m compelled to ask what may not be the most vital question of our age, but a fun parlour game nevertheless for for a drizzly Nashville morning: In all of Moviedom – who’s the best impersonator of Welles?
Ben Foster – Still the Greatest Actor in the Movies?
UPDATE: Our Ben Foster Podcast Interview on ‘The Messenger’ is Now Online – Click Here to Listen or Click Here to Subscribe for Free to the Podcast and have the interview downloaded automatically. – – – In February I asked the question of that character actor you may have seen in a comic western, or [...]
The Exodus of Henry Gibson
You know Henry Gibson. He’s one of those character actors who beefed up everything he was in, and indelibly so. Fully worthy of Jett’s appellation ‘an OTG actor’ (no matter how bad the movie, when he’s on screen, your reflex is to say ‘Oh Thank God’). You can’t imagine ‘Magnolia’ without his Luciferian bar-loiterer [...]
The Film Talk – Part 84 – It's All Now: An Interview with Elliott Gould on Natalie Wood and the Films of the 70's
This Episode: In association with the Film Society of Lincoln Center and their Natalie Wood retrospective Gareth and I interview Elliott Gould on his relationship with Natalie and the films of the 1970′s. Get TFT delivered weekly via iTunes Subscribe to our podcast Subscribe to our blog Follow us on Twitter
What You Thought You Always Knew
What You Thought You Always Knew 1: That Robert Duvall is a great actor 2: That he won an Oscar for his performance in ‘Tender Mercies’ 3: That, despite the fact that you loved him in films as various as ‘The Godfather’, ‘The Apostle’, and ‘Wrestling Ernest Hemingway’; that you have never been let down [...]
Karl Malden
So, here’s the thing about Karl Malden. Best role? Playing a liberationist priest in ‘On the Waterfront’. The priest may not know that he’s a liberationist, but Malden does. It’s an astonishing, grounded, fiery performance of balanced light and heat. It makes you want to believe. Last role? Playing a priest in ‘The West Wing’. [...]
Il divo
“I recognize my limits but when I look around I realise I am not living exactly in a world of giants,” says Giulio Andreotti, Italy’s dominant post-Second World War politician, in Paolo Sorrentino’s ‘Il divo‘, the most exciting narrative fiction feature film I’ve seen this year. Sorrentino’s films look like Edward Hopper paintings, dreamed by [...]
David Carradine and Haskell Wexler – Film Making as Collaboration
Film Making is a collaborative art. Want proof? Check out this description of this ‘Bound for Glory’ panel gone awry, (link courtesy of Higgins who made my day with this link), featuring the late David Carradine and revered cinematographer Haskell Wexler: Bound for Hell, Or Glory? David Carradine and the Feistiest Film Panel Ever In [...]
David Carradine Has Left Us
Sad to report, but David Carradine has left us: Actor David Carradine found dead The bluntness of the report above and the url of this post belies his gentle presence on screen. If you haven’t seen his work I recommend a double bill of ‘Bound for Glory’ and ‘Death Race 2000′.
