Letterboxd review by Wilson ★★★★½
Bernard Rose is an interesting filmmaker, with a strange obsession for adapting Leo Tolstoy. ivans xtc. is his version of the Tolstoy novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Rose has directed another four Tolstoy adaptations, as far as I can see (pretty sure Leo didn’t have a short story about Candyman…), he has also made Anna Karenina (1997), The Kreutzer Sonata, Two Jacks and Boxing Day.

Rose takes the Tolstoy stories and updates them to the modern day, often setting them in sleazy Hollywood. He casts Danny Huston and lets rip.

ivans xtc. is a really full throttle Hollywood satire. It is a sleazy, sordid 90 minutes. The kind of film where Peter Weller snorts cocaine off Danny Huston’s wife, “2 milimetres from her pussy” as the film would have it. Rose pulls no punches with Hollywood, while keeping his literary precision.

He scores the film with a cold, classical soundscape; while swerving into the satire by casting Tiffani Thiessen and Victoria Silvstedt, as strange versions of their own public personas.

The film is probably most notable for its incredibly low-grade digital photography, that adds to its grimey appearance. It deliberately looks terrible, which just adds to the film.

However, in the end, this film belongs to Danny Huston. Huston manically stumbles around the film, delivering a masterclass in charisma. Huston plays a Hollywood agent, with snake-oil charm, a huge grin and dead eyes and an unending love of consumption. Yet the film works because it opens with his death, the reactions to his death, then spins backwards into his last weekend, of parties, and drugs and sex.

It is like the louche Ikiru.

Yet, despite the level of unlikeable debauchery, Rose and Huston makes the film an emotionally resonant work. Where you feel deeply by the end of the 90 minutes for main character.

ivans xtc. is one of the most neglected great films of the last 15 years. A brutal satire, a great literary adaptation, a stunning performance; a debauched, sexy, drama, that ends up as a really melancholic character study.

Ivansxtc.AKA.Ivans.xtc.2000.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 32 min
Size: 	2.46 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1020x576 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 355 kb/s
BPP: 	0.238
Audio
#1:  	English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/B128AFCB844F134/Ivansxtc.AKA.Ivans.xtc.2000.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

https://rapidgator.net/file/92392dedb3574b90c7e885479d2fd5ee/Ivansxtc.AKA.Ivans.xtc.2000.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Bernard Rose – Ivansxtc AKA Ivans xtc. (To Live and Die in Hollywood) (2000) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
The Candyman, a murderous soul with a hook for a hand, is accidentally summoned to reality by a skeptic grad student researching the monster’s myth.

Candyman.1992.576p.Bluray.AC3.x264-LAA.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 39mn
Size:	4.72 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	1024x552
Aspect ratio:	1.85:1
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	6 228 kb/s
Audio
#1:	English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s
#2:	English 2.0ch AAC @ 63.3 kb/s (Commentary by writer/director Bernard Rose and actor Tony Todd)
#3:	English 2.0ch AAC @ 62.0 kb/s (Commentary by film critics Stephen Jones and Kim Newman)

https://nitro.download/view/F4567CADF5A7A5A/Candyman.1992.576p.Bluray.AC3.x264-LAA.mkv

https://tezfiles.com/file/9d436952ff4d5/Candyman.1992.576p.Bluray.AC3.x264-LAA.mp4

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Bernard Rose – Candyman (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The life and death of the legendary Ludwig van Beethoven. Besides all the work he is known for, the composer once wrote a famous love letter to a nameless beloved, and the movie tries to find out who this beloved was–not easy, as Beethoven has had many women in his life.

Immortal.Beloved.1994.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	2h 0mn
Size:	2.01 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	706x358 ~> 841x358
Aspect ratio:	2.35:1
Frame rate:	23.976 fps
Bit rate:	1 896 kb/s
Audio
#1:	English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 384 kb/s
#2:	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 99.8 kb/s (Commentary with director Bernard Rose)

https://nitro.download/view/9155E527DBF4FEF/Immortal.Beloved.1994.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English, Hungarian
Subtitles:English, Spanish

The post Bernard Rose – Immortal Beloved (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

An artist spends his or her existence examining life through their art, so why is it often so hard to use art to examine the artist’s life in turn? We’ve all seen biopics that merely scratch the surface of a creative existence, either spending too much time focusing on the travails of the individual and leaving their creations by the wayside, or flat studies of the work alone that seemingly forget that there was a person behind the words or images.

Isaac Julien’s new documentary Derek tries to have the best of everything in its portrait of painter and visionary filmmaker Derek Jarman, and for the most part, it succeeds. As a tribute to the man, Julien and his collaborators, producer Colin MacCabe and actress Tilda Swinton, let the viewer behind the curtain to see who Jarman was and what fueled his inspired works; at the same time, we see pieces of that work, and we learn what it meant to him as a person and to the culture at large.

Jarman made a variety of films through the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s that broke the boundaries between the fine arts and cinematic language. He also blazed a trail for new queer cinema, adopting the gaudy style of rebels like Ken Russell (who hired the young artist to build sets for The Devils) and the in-your-face, ramshackle production of the punk rock movement. At the same time, movies like Sebastiane and The Tempest display an understanding of a more classical model, finding subversive elements in the old that spoke to the newness of a more open, contemporary world. As a maverick in art and in life, Jarman always walked it like he talked it, adding his voice to political outcries and openly living with HIV. Even as his health dwindled, leading to his death in 1994, he still challenged conventions, making his final epic, Blue, which asked audiences to stare at a blue screen and listen to various monologues that would conjure images within the blank color. His musings touched so many that, to this day, people still travel to Derek’s home in Dungeness to look at the rock garden he sculpted in his private hours.

Julien’s film is constructed as a collage, using old super-8 home movies from all the periods of Jarman’s life, news footage of his activities, and clips from his films to create a cinematic object that is as interesting to look at as it is informative–something its subject could certainly appreciate. As the running backbone of Derek, the director uses two main sources: a 1991 interview Jarman gave to MacCabe in anticipation of HIV and AIDS sapping his strength and new footage of Swinton, a regular Jarman collaborator, visiting important places in his life while her voiceover reads from a tribute she wrote to her friend. Derek may be a short 76 minutes, but in that time, these devotees get closer to the essence of the man they seek to honor than most bloated puff pieces do in twice the time.

Derek should play just as well to Jarman’s fans and the uninitiated alike. I first became aware of his work via his music videos for bands like the Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, and Suede, and I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve been remiss in seeking out his more personal endeavors. Having now watched Derek and gaining a newfound respect for its hero, it’s a situation I’m going to quickly remedy.

Extras are a short introduction from Colin McCabe and a longer interview with DJ.

1.09GB | 1h 16m | 720×478 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/8AD7362F649B81F/Derek_(Isaac_Julien_2008).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/83CB4D0B7FFDB68/Derek_Jarman_Interview.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/98AB937AC33CB58/Introduction_by_Colin_McCabe.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Isaac Julien & Bernard Rose – Derek [+ Extras] (2008) first appeared on Cinema of the World.