Recently in film Category

"Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema and an artist who changed the way the world perceived the movies, died Monday, local media reported. He was 89 years old."

For more of Michael Wilmington's piece on Bergman click here. (Registration at chicagotribune.com is required, but it's free.)

Michael Moore’s latest makes the point once again: we are living in the Golden Age of documentaries. This time, he affords us a disturbing look into the diseased guts of the American medical system.

Plenty of Americans – perhaps a majority – blindly believe that we have the best medical system in the world. In fact we are near the very bottom the list (#37) according to the World Health Organization. The fallacy of American medical primacy is one whose debunking takes up a good deal of Moore’s film. Toward that end Moore takes a truly circumspect approach: he (partially) circles the globe to look at the health care apparatus employed by other countries, namely Canada, Cuba, Britain and France. It is an evenhanded approach that perhaps slightly exaggerates the effectiveness of those systems, nevertheless, it is hard to dispute the superiority of all of them (with the possible exception of Cuba’s). If we’re going to import all our luxury goods and cars from countries that make a better product, why not import their health care systems as well?

Where is Hef anyway? Oh never mind, clearly he's not being missed in this picture.....could it be that The Shark is poised for yet another return to the big screen with hmmm... Hefs Women as bait errrr.... I mean co-stars? .......what would it be, Blonde On Jaws? Or..... Sea Meat Mansion! or, how about, Centerfold Sharkbait!...

In 1977, I Spit on Your Grave (Meir Zarchi), issued under the less flamboyant title Day of the Woman (and also known as I Hate Your Guts and The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill), was condemned across continents for being a film that, according to Roger Ebert in “Why Movie Audiences Aren’t Safe Anymore,” fostered in the audience rape and violence towards women (Ebert 54). Initially, the film was banned in the United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, and Germany. Upon its release in theaters, it was picketed by various groups (including women’s organizations) and panned by critics; and still, thirty years later, it remains a subject of controversy. That a low budget B-film can generate an inordinate amount of storm and stress is illustrated by Ebert’s assessment of the film as "a vile bag of garbage” that is “so sick, reprehensible, and contemptible that I can hardly believe it’s playing in respectable theaters” (Ebert 61). Gene Siskel, in a concurrent review, labeled it as “easily the most offensive film I have seen in my 11 years on the movie beat” (Siskel 3). Ten years later, in the 1987 Video Movie Guide, film critics Mick Martin and Marsha Porter called I Spit on Your Grave

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Sidelong glimpses of the city on my first day at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

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Ceci n'est pas un marché.

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There are traditionally Nine Muses and Nine Arts, frequently linked to one another. My Latin professor Dr Clemens Müller and I have concocted a fresh, contemporary version of this system for no darn reason other than pure, arcane fun.

And now for Part 2 of How I was Exploited by the Indian Film Industry and Enjoyed Nearly Every Aspect of It -

Suddenly this little adventure seemed to come with a tight leash attached - Every time I even thought about going for water or juice or something one of the assistants would say - Please John Kruthi, your place, your costume - which meant my sunglasses - even when they were busy fiddling with cameras or some such thing - they only had two of course with no lights - shooting had to stop by 6 pm when the sun went down - Just one step above art school...

THE SOUND IN MODERN TIMES
The moment we started thinking about sound, we started making sound films. The moment the soundtrack stopped being an assumed quality and started being a controlled aspect of the presentation of a film, we started thinking sound cinema. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a sound film because Dreyer insisted that it be shown without a soundtrack. And Charlie Chaplin, who waited so many years to finally reveal his voice, was the one of the greatest early sound directors. Recently, while watching Modern Times for the first time in many years, I realized that it’s an exemplary sound film. In it, Chaplin utilizes the faculties of sound to achieve the desired comic effects only sound effects and music could create.