The actor defends his beliefs on US TV, claiming most people attack Scientology because ‘it’s not understood’
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Showing posts with label Film | The Guardian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film | The Guardian. Show all posts
Monday, 20 April 2015
Holocaust documentary deemed too horrific reaches cinemas – after 70 years
In 1945, Alfred Hitchcock advised on a film that would catalogue the horrors uncovered in concentration camps by Allied troops. Now the Imperial War Museum has completed the film with previously unseen footage
Skeletal figures, too weak to move, wait limply for help. At gunpoint, blank-faced SS officers manhandle the twisted bodies of the prisoners they starved to death, slinging them into gigantic burial pits that will eventually be filled with thousands of corpses. Bullet-riddled bodies and skulls smashed into grotesque shapes line country roads. Having frantically tried to dig his way out of a barn where hundreds were being burned to death, a man’s body lies wedged under a wall where he was shot by German troops.
The catalogue of horrors uncovered by the film German Concentration Camps Factual Survey is unremitting, but they remained unseen for decades.
Related: The Holocaust film that was too shocking to show
Continue reading...Lars von Trier: ‘I’ve started drinking again, so I can work’
After his Nazi jokes saw him ejected from Cannes in 2011, Lars von Trier took a vow of silence. In one of the first interviews he’s given since then, Lucy Cheung met him at the Zentropa studio in Denmark to talk about sex, alcoholism and his reaction to the Copenhagen shootings
How was AA?
I went to AA meetings every day for half a year. We supported each other to keep sober. These people kind of become your family. I used all my strength to get sober – now I start to drink a little again, so that I can work. When you shoot a film, it’s hard work, and you tend to drink more.
Continue reading...How did Fast & Furious 7 become the fastest film to break the $1bn barrier?
The latest release in the series, Fast & Furious 7, is breaking box-office records and the franchise shows no signs of slowing down. Not bad for a film whose star died two months into filming …
Name: Fast & Furious.
Age: 14.
Continue reading...Fast & Furious 7 becomes quickest film ever to reach $1bn globally
Paul Walker’s final film continues to break records while audiences are less impressed with Tom Hardy’s latest
Fast and Furious 7 led the US box office over the weekend for the third consecutive week, scoring another $29.1m (£19.5m) to add to its $294.4m (£197.3m) total.
The hit sequel, which features the last on-screen appearance of Paul Walker, also broke a global record by becoming the fastest film to ever make $1bn at the box office. By the end of Sunday, it had made $1.153bn, which now makes it the seventh biggest film of all time.
Related: The strange case of Fast & Furious star Paul Walker | Catherine Shoard
Continue reading...Alleged Avengers: Age of Ultron post-credits scene introduces familiar face
A possibly fake sneak peek has surfaced on YouTube which brings a new hero to the team
While Joss Whedon has claimed that his superhero sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron won’t feature a trademark post-credits scene, an alleged leak has cropped up online over the weekend.
Although the video might be fake, if you don’t want to risk a surprise being spoiled, you should probably stop reading now.
Related: Joss Whedon: ‘Making The Avengers is tough. I may die…’
Continue reading...Scherzo Diabolico review – horror/humour hybrid is no Coen bros caper
Adrián GarcÃa Bogliano’s kidnapping tale gone awry has moments of geniune electricity but is just too nasty for its own good
There’s an “aha” moment deep into Scherzo Diabolico when you’ll discover the lead character, Aram (Francisco Barreiro), is not quite the vicious monster you think he is. It’s at or around the same point you can start making a case that this latest from Spanish-born, Mexican-based horror director Adrián GarcÃa Bogliano is more than just a gruesome exercise in exploitation. Unfortunately, it’s too little too late for both. This kidnapping tale gone awry, while not without one or two moments of genuine electricity, is just too nasty for its own good.
Barreiro’s Aram is a working stiff middle-manger, stuck putting in overtime hours without overtime pay. His wife disrespects him, his young son can’t relate to him outside of superhero costumes. In his spare time he researches how to put people in sleeper holds (practising on his senile father) and stalks a teen girl. He’s also sleeping with a gal from the office who doubles as a prostitute, but whether their relationship is more than professional is ambiguous. Barreiro, a little pudgy and sporting a dorky moustache, doesn’t really look like a threat, which is why his kidnapping of the young girl comes as a bit of a shock. In time we’ll discover that the girl is the boss’s daughter, and his schemes are more career-oriented than sexual. Or … are they? It’s a little hard to tell.
Continue reading...Rhodes of Africa: only slightly less offensive than the man himself
With narration that fails to mention Rhodesia’s African tribes in its population, things only get worse with Rhodes’s racist, imperialistic delusions masquerading as kindly paternalism
Rhodes of Africa (1936)
Director: Berthold Viertel
Entertainment grade: C
History grade: C+
Cecil Rhodes was one of the most remarkable imperialists in British history. Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) was named after him. Last week, his statue was removed from the University of Cape Town.
Continue reading...My riotous night with the future queen
Two years ago, Peter Bradshaw wrote a comic novel inspired by Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret partying with the masses on VE Day. So he was intrigued to see that someone else had turned their royal shenanigans into a film. Would anyone get to kiss the royal lips in their version? Continue reading...
Exclusive: Partisan trailer, Ariel Kleiman's film starring Vincent Cassel – video
Vincent Cassel stars as Gregori, the charismatic leader of a cult-like family of abandoned women and their children. Gregori trains the children as assassins, but when the eldest child Alexander (Jeremy Chabriel) questions his authority, their world begins to implode. Shot in Melbourne and Georgia, Partisan is acclaimed writer-director Ariel Kleiman's debut feature and opens in Australia in late May Continue reading...
Sunday, 19 April 2015
Orion review: the reluctant Elvis-alike turned pretender to the King's throne
Jeanie Finlay’s ode to Jimmy Ellis, who looked like Elvis, sounded like Elvis and didn’t want to be like Elvis until after Presley’s death, tries to make a country and western classic out of a one-hit wonder
Orion was not trying to be just like Elvis. He even released a single called “I’m Not Trying To Be Just Like Elvis.” The problem, inasmuch as it is a problem, is that Jimmy Ellis, an Alabama-born singer, really sounded a lot like Elvis. The likeness was to the point that this natural talent, who was 10 years younger than The King, was unable to secure any significant work in the recording industry. But in 1977, when Elvis Presley died and a wave of Elvis-nostalgia hit, a business opportunity knocked.
Sun Records, the label that first recorded Elvis (and other early rock n’ roll giants), had been purchased by one Shelby Singleton. Let’s be generous and call him “an entrepreneurial sort.” Singleton rereleased some earlier Sun tracks with Jimmy Ellis dubbed in sounding just like Elvis, and labelled it Jerry Lee Lewis “And Friends.” Just as these were hitting big, the first tabloid rumblings about Elvis faking his death were starting to bubble up. A woman named Gail Brewer-Giorgio was readying a novel about an Elvis-like figure who did just that. The book was called Orion and, while who specifically dreamt up what is still up for debate, Ellis soon found himself on the cover of an album called Orion: Reborn. He sounded just like The King and wore a face-obscuring mask. Was this actually Elvis under a new persona?
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