Ultimately a story about destiny, “La Note Bleue” seems a personal reflection of Zulawski’s experiences, for both he and Chopin were Polish expatriates in France.
The film is highly theatrical and occasionally hilarious, but despite its ups and downs, the movie’s highlight is Chopin’s music, brilliantly performed by Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak.Read More »
This documentary celebrates the 100th anniversary of the cinema birth. It is an historic running through the technical and artistic evolution of the 7th art. We move from mute to sound, from B&W to color, trough all the genders (musical, Lyric, politic…). Beside it we have a kind of resume of the historic contest in which cinema lived till now, events and movements (neo-realism, classical etc.). All the aspects are taken in consideration: fashion, star system till the end, the sad end, of cinema in the theaters.Read More »
A modern fable about an invisible man who gets the chance to become a real human being. He has to learn to be brave, honest and conscientious. ‘P’ is a fantasy figure, living behind the wallpaper in seven year-old Lisa’s bedroom. Due to the destruction of the building in which Lisa lives, P leaves Lisa and her fantasy world. He ends up at a refugee center, where he learns Danish and becomes an integrated member of society. An apartment is assigned to P and he gets a job in a shoe store. P’s naiveté and good will makes him an easy prey. Without being guilty, he becomes under suspicion of being a wanted child molester. This is the story of P’s dramatic journey through the Fall of Man in an attempt to become a good citizen.Read More »
Quote:
Torben Skjødt Jensen’s elegant documentary is a collage of memories and reflections on one of cinema’s greatest directors. Visually rich and densely layered, Carl Th. Dreyer—My Métier illuminates an artist too little understood and too important to overlook. Through interviews, historical writings, and rare archival footage, a portrait of Dreyer emerges—an austere perfectionist, yes, but also a passionate man possessing a genuine sense of humor.Read More »
Plot (from AMG):
The Ballad of Little Jo is based on a true story — several true stories, in fact. Suzy Amis plays demure young Josephine Monagan, who in 1866 is run out of her home town after bearing an illegitimate child. Fleeing westward, Josephine is terrified by stories of how treacherous the frontier can be for a woman alone. As a result, upon arriving in the muddy burg of Ruby City, she disguises herself as a man, going so far as to scar her face to suggest that she’s been in a few scrapes. In this guise, “Little Jo” does just fine by herself for nearly 30 years! Almost as good as Suzy Amis is Bo Hopkins as gunslinger Frank Badger, Little Jo’s best buddy (if only he knew….) Written and directed by Maggie Greenwald, The Ballad of Little Jo does a marvelous job conveying the people and places of its period; and, unlike Bad Girls (which was released around the same time), we aren’t bludgeoned to death by feminist revisionism. Unfortunately ignored when it went out to theatres in the fall of 1993, The Ballad of Little Jo has fared rather better on video.Read More »
Thomas Arslan’s second feature film and part of his Berlin-trilogy is a slow-paced milieu study of German-Turkish youth in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The film depicts the every day life, domestic conflicts, dreams and disappointments of three siblings and their aimless, meandering strolls through the Kreuzberg district. The family itself encapsulates the culture clash that is at the centre of many German-Turkish films. In Arslan’s film, the mother is German, the father is Turkish and the children have to make up their own minds about their cultural allegiances. Seventeen-year-old Leyla tries to escape from her family by spending most of her time with her best friend Sevim. Read More »
Ladybird, Ladybird
BY ROGER EBERT / January 20, 1995
Ladybug, ladybug, Fly away home.
Your house is on fire, And your children will burn.
Nursery rhyme This is the story of a troublesome woman. A woman with a big heart and a big temper, who has had four children by four different fathers, and lost custody of all of them because she cannot function responsibly. Or, looking at it differently, it is the story of a woman persecuted by British social workers who slap her down every time she almost has her life together. The strength of the film is that there is truth to both interpretations: Yes, she is treated cruelly by social workers – and, yes, she is her own worst enemy.Read More »
Plot Synopsis
Definitely not to be confused with the 1949 Paramount release starring William Holden or the Larry McMurtry 1995 television mini-series, this 20 minute unfinished “western” marked the first helpless Hollywood effort of legendary bad filmmaker Edward J. Wood, Jr. Together with a friend, 18-year-old John Crawford Thomas, the 23-year-old Wood produced his little epic in 16 mm on a one-day shooting schedule at the Iverson Ranch in Chatsworth, California, apparently blowing Thomas’ inheritance in the process. A few other scenes ere filmed several weeks later in Griffith Park, but then Wood ran out of funds or acquaintances with ready cash (a recurring problem for the young auteur). Read More »
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Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn’t a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there. Actually, the island isn’t deserted and when the Greeks understand that those Italians are harmless, they came out of their hiding places in the mountains and continue their peaceful lives. Soon the soldiers discover that being left behind in a God-forgotten Greek island isn’t such a bad thing, after all…Read More »