Words From The Wise: Cannes 2013: Some Thoughts On The Official Lineup
Posted on Saturday April 20, 2013, 14:38 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 Although the internet very nearly ruined any surprises this year, the Cannes Film Festival remains a somewhat bespoke event that makes it almost literally impossible to predict, even though the guessing game starts earlier every year. As ever, the initial reactions pointed out what's NOT there, something which also started earlier this year when new films by regulars Pedro Almodóvar, Woody Allen and Lars Von Trier were all nixed by the rumour mill in the run-up to Thursday's announcement. Having said that, most of the anticipated titles seem to be in the mix, the only notable no-shows – mostly because they simply won't be ready – appear to be Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, Spike Jonze's Her, Terry Gilliam's Zero Theorem and Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin. Personally, I was relieved that Lee Daniels' The Butler ... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Argo: a round table encounter with Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston and John Goodman
Posted on Sunday March 3, 2013, 13:49 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 The "round table interview", a mini-press conference of sorts, is the bane of every professional journalist's life, made worse when the powers that be decide to "pair up the talent", usually putting the tacturn superstar with the garrulous little-known director – a tactic that inevitably works to nobody's advantage. When I heard that the promotional duties for Argo at last year's Toronto International Film Festival would involve a group interview with the film's supporting cast of John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Bryan Cranston – who are never all on screen together, as I recall – my heart sank. What on earth would we do with it? As it turned out, the half-hour spent in their company was pretty entertaining. So, to coincide with the film's (UK) release on DVD, I thought I'd share it…
*Warning! Contains minor spoilers…* Argo round table with John Goodman, Alan Arkin ...Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Sundance 2013: The Round-Up Part 5
Posted on Wednesday January 30, 2013, 10:37 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 First things first; the nature of Sundance buzz meant that I missed three of this year's most talked-about narrative titles – Fruitvale, The Spectacular Now and Ain't Them Bodies Saints – while I also failed desperately to catch up with This Is Martin Bonner, The Moo Man and quite a lot of the midnight movies. However, I did manage to see the hot sale of Sundance 2013, and what a letdown that turned out to be. Directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Way, Way Back couldn't be more of an obvious Sundance pitch if it was called Little Miss Bunshine. It reunites Steve Carell and Toni Collette in a coming-of-age story, this time involving a teenage boy, Duncan (Liam James), who's on holiday with his mother (Collette) and her dreadful new boyfriend (Carell) at the latter's beach house. Finding himself excluded from the local social scene, Duncan encounters a shabby but ch... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Sundance 2013: The Round-Up Part 4
Posted on Monday January 28, 2013, 18:18 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 Documentaries continue to thrive at Sundance, and music docs are usually well served there, having hosted the world premieres of DiG!, Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man And Patti Smith: Dream Of Life in recent years. This year saw the debut of Brett Morgan's film about The Eagles, but instead I opted for Greg Camalier's Muscle Shoals, about an area of smalltown Alabama that in long stretches of the 60s and 70s changed the sound of modern music forever. At nearly two hours it may be too much for the uninitiated, but for fans of the Muscle Shoals sound – borrowed by artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones and Lynard Skynard – it may not be enough.
Taking a steady, organic approach to the medium, Camalier's film makes a nice change from the usual TV-ready docs that use rapid-fire talking-head soundbites to push the story forward. Instead, the musicians are given time to tell their stories, and though all are engross... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Sundance 2013: The Round-Up Part 3
Posted on Wednesday January 23, 2013, 20:45 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 The female-directed comedies at this year's Sundance have been a marked improvement on previous years, and I will skate over the unendurable Ass Backwards – another spin on the Romy & Michelle formula, this time with two dim-witted best friends revisiting the beauty-pageant world of their childhood – to get to the really rather wonderful In A World.... Written by and starring Lake Bell, this small but very charming comedy takes place in the competitive world of Hollywood vocal talents, and begins with a tribute to the king of voiceover artists Don LaFontaine, who died in 2008. From here, we meet Carol (Bell), daughter of Sam (Fred Melamed), who is widely regarded to be the fruity-toned successor to LaFontaine's mantle. Carol has been struggling as a part-time voice coach in her father's shadow, but when the trailer for an new tween-lit quadrilogy is mooted, Carol decides to put in her bid to narrate it, going up against hot newc... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Sundance 2013: The Round-Up Part Two
Posted on Wednesday January 23, 2013, 10:34 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 Two years ago I fell in love with Drake Doremus's Like Crazy, the small and intimate but very beautiful story of a British girl who falls for a classmate while studying in the US and begins a transatlantic relationship with him. The follow-up, Breathe In, reuniting Doremus with the fantastic Felicity Jones, is an equally low-key but much more adult affair, this time telling a similar story from the perspective of a much older man. Guy Pearce stars as a married music teacher whose family welcome a teenage girl - Jones, again playing a foreign-exchange student - whose precocious talents as a pianist, and jaded adult outlook, stir something in him and reawaken his youthful dreams. That it doesn't end well goes without saying, but though it does deal with the aftermath, Breathe In is more a superbly crafted character story, with a soulful central performance by Pearce.
Michael Winterbottom's The Look Of Love also rests on one man's sh... Continue reading... Comment Now (1 comment)
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Sundance 2013: The Round Up Part One
Posted on Wednesday January 23, 2013, 10:30 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 According to founder Robert Redford, the ethos of the Sundance Film Festival can be described in one word: change. “Some people fight and resist it because they are afraid of it,” he noted at the opening-day press conference on Thursday, “others accept it and roll along with it.” Though we're not talking seismic changes, Sundance is certainly a festival that moves with the times, and after the breakout success last year of Beasts Of The Southern Wild – which is following 2009's Precious to the Oscars – this year is definitely attracting interest from an industry looking for fresh new ideas.
They're not being disappointed. Yesterday saw the world premiere of Shane Carruth's Upstream Color, the director's first film since his prize-winning cerebral sci-fi drama Primer in 2004 – and quite possibly the most anticipated movie at Sundance this year. Although the festival attracts hundreds of bona... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Why I Love Django Unchained
Posted on Sunday December 23, 2012, 14:53 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 I was surprised when it turned out Sony Pictures had pitched the hardest to release Quentin Tarantino's new film internationally, since I remember all too well the last time that studio released a spaghetti western featuring Leonardo DiCaprio: it died a death. I haven't seen Sam Raimi's The Quick And The Dead since it came out in 1995, but back then it was considered toxic. I, on the other hand, loved it; a kind of berserk, ultra-heightened Sergio Leone pastiche – as made by the Three Stooges – it nevertheless maintained the genre's grim sense of anarchy, albeit by making that point in a wildly literal way. All the same, it wasn't loved, and neither was James Mangold's underrated 3:10 To Yuma (2007), which – although it was played much more straight, being a remake of a 1957 “proper” Hollywood western based on a short story by one of ... Continue reading... Comment Now (5 comments)
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Festival report: CPH:DOX Part Two
Posted on Tuesday November 13, 2012, 11:53 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 The interesting thing about the hybridisation of documentaries is that nothing is always what it seems. And just as City World (see last post) suggested something more expansive than a child's-eye view of life, so I Have Always Been A Dreamer, by Sabine Gruffat, led me to expect something smaller than a compare-and-contrast view of two huge cities: Detroit, USA, and Dubai, UAE. Though certainly informative, the film can't help but suffer comparisons with two recent docs on the Motor City – mostly Detropia, by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, and also Julien Temple's BBC film Requiem For Detroit? – while the Dubai section doesn't have as much history to work with. I found my mind wandering a bit, which was also, unfortunately, the case with The Last Station, by Cristian Soto and Catalina Vergara. A very beautifully lit and respectful st... Continue reading... Comment Now
Back To TopWords From The Wise: Festival report: CPH:DOX Part One
Posted on Monday November 12, 2012, 17:11 by Damon Wise in Words From The Wise
 CPH:DOX is now in its tenth year and has quickly established itself as one of the hippest documentary festivals on the calendar – not quite the juggernaut that is IDFA in Amsterdam but certainly a buzzing industry hub. Like many city festivals, CPH:DOX permeates Copenhagen without actually seeming to have a centre, which often makes it hard to know whether you're in the right place watching the right film. But unlike most other festivals this one does seem to have an ethos, and though all the films on display are indeed documentaries, they're far removed from the flat talking-head variety that dominated the landscape in the 70s and 80s. The buzzword these days is “hybrid”, and the films programmed this year more than blurred the edges of the genre – so much so that some of them actually seemed to stand completely outside it.
As was to be expected, not everything worked. For one thing, there were a lot of prose poems, like City WorldContinue reading... Comment Now
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