Showing posts with label martin scorsese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label martin scorsese. Show all posts
6 June 2018
14 March 2015
Watch The "The Origins of Auteur Theory" Video Essay
“There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors,” François Truffaut once said when talking about the auteur theory.It's a word that's been used for many decades when talking about filmmakers who embeded their personal stamp on their own film.When it started or who was given the first we have to go back to French New Wave Cinema of late 1950's into 1960's when it became very popularised. Everyone from Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick , Martin Scorsese have all been given the title of Auteur but do we really know what an Auteur really is?
In this 17 minute video essay from FilmakerIQ they try and explain what the terms means as year after year many of us debate the meaning and who should be regarded as an 'auteur'. When the likes of Michael Bay get's regarded as an auteur it can easily become heated . This video delivers an nice argument and useful, entertaining especially if your wanting to enhance your film history knowledge too!
3 January 2014
Watch Martin Scorsese's Student Short Film 'It’s Not Just You, Murray!'
Later this month Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street will arrive in UK cinemas and to get us into the mood for that much anticipated movie, Filmschoolrejects have dived into archives and unearthed a Scorsese gem. Dating back to film maestro's days at University and a short film called 'It's Not Just You, Murray!'
The film dates back to 1964 Scorsese was a student at NYU Film School and like any film student a number of short films are made and this 50 year old gem has a familiar feel to it. It's Not Just You, Murray! is a 16 minute film which showcases many traits seen in the directors future films like Goodfellas, even the new one The Wolf Of Wall Street especially. Leonardo Di Caprio plays Jordan Belfort starts the film narrating how he got from rags to riches before corruption took over, In It's Not Just You, Murray!, Murray played by Ira Rubin does likewise. As Murray progresses it becomes more evident it becomes more a template for Goodfellas, Casino with the multiple narrations with even a Fellini's 81/2 homage too.
26 September 2013
Martin Scorsese World Cinema Foundation Volume 1 To Get A Masters Of Cinema Release
Rating:
PG
DVD/BD Release Date:
25th November 2013 (UK)
Distributor:
Eureka! Entertainment
Pre-Order/Buy:
Martin Scorsese Presents: World Cinema Foundation: Volume One - Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) [Masters of Cinema]
Eureka! Entertainment have announced the release of MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS: WORLD CINEMA FOUNDATION: VOLUME ONE ( Three films preserved, restored, and re-presented by the efforts of the World Cinema Foundation: DRY SUMMER / TRANCES / REVENGE). This is the first release from the official partnership between Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation and The Masters of Cinema Series, and will be released in a Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) box set edition on 25 November 2013.
Founded in 2007 and overseen by Martin Scorsese, the World Cinema Foundation (WCF) has spearheaded efforts to preserve, restore, and annually re-present neglected masterpieces of world cinema, particularly those from areas of the globe that have not traditionally been highlighted in prevailing evaluations of film, or which have lacked the financial, technical, or governmental infrastructure to ensure their preservation.
As the WCF's mission statement announces: "Cinema is an international language, an international art, but, above all, it is a source of enlightenment. There are wonderful, remarkable films, past and present, from Mexico, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Asia that deserve to be known and seen. Composed of filmmakers from every continent, the World Cinema Foundation breathes life into the idea that when a cultural patrimony is lost, no matter how small or supposedly 'marginal' the country might be, we are all poorer for it."
The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to act as the official partner of the World Cinema Foundation for the UK region. In this first in a regular series of Blu-ray box sets, we present the WCF's restorations of masterpieces from Turkey (Erksan's Dry Summer), Morocco (El Maanouni's Trances), and Kazakhstan (Shinarbaev's Revenge), with exclusive introductions by Martin Scorsese for each film in this set.
DRY SUMMER [ SUSUZ YAZ ] | A film by Metin Erksan | 1964 | Turkey | 75 minutes | 1.37:1 original aspect ratio
A brutal naturalist melodrama, Metin Erksan's masterful Dry Summer [Susuz yaz], which won the Golden Bear at the 1964 Berlin Film Festival, returns to the spotlight in a new restoration after decades of suppression by Turkish authorities: an arid fate for one of the most exciting films of the 1960s. Viscerally tactile, unsparing, and even on occasion outright lurid, Dry Summer has been described by filmmaker Fatih Akin as "one of the most important legacies of Turkish cinema."
During a particularly dry rural Turkish summer, a group of local workers enter into a dispute with a landowner when he decides the construction of new irrigation infrastructure must first and foremost service his own property. Wholly rapacious, the landowner foments a private war with his own kin after the brother takes a bewitching young wife. The battle between the factions plays out in stunning set-pieces: a pursuit with pistols amidst grass-stalks and dam-water before the setting sun evokes elements of Renoir (Toni), Ford (The World Moves On), Bergman (The Virgin Spring), and Shindô (Onibaba), while a scene set in a brush thicket wherein the landowner and his aggressors fight it out hatchet-and-club provides drama at least as exciting and gasp-inducing as the climax of Seven Samurai.
Dry Summer's sweat-dappled tone and baked images of promenade and labour recall Mexican-period Buñuel as much as aspects of mid-'50s Italian commercial melodrama and, via the film's backdrop of agrarian agitation and its low angles – which effect a figural relief against blazing, albeit greyish mid-contrast summer skies – post-montage Soviet agitprop. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the World Cinema Foundation's restoration of Metin Erksan's classic on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
TRANCES [ TRANSES ] | A film by Ahmed El Maanouni | 1981 | Morocco | 87 minutes | 1.85:1 original aspect ratio
The inaugural film of the World Cinema Foundation's efforts, Trances [Transes] is a picture unlike any other: a poetic, roving documentary-portrait performance-film based around the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane.
In this rare, transformational work, Nass El Ghiwane perform their music at concerts at once fervidly rally-like and suffused with the spontaneity of a mass happening; recount their time working alongside the great chaâbi musician Boudjemaâ El Ankis in the 1970s; and generally philosophise and reflect upon life. As Martin Scorsese expressed at the time of the film's re-presentation in 2007: "I became passionate about this music that I heard and I saw also the way the film was made, the concert that was photographed and the effect of the music on the audience at the concert. I tracked down the music and eventually it became my inspiration for many of the designs and construction of my film The Last Temptation of Christ. [...] And I think the group was singing damnation: their people, their beliefs, their sufferings, and their prayers all came through their singing. And I think the film is beautifully made by Ahmed El Maanouni; it's been an obsession of mine since 1981."
True to its title, Trances is an hypnotic, exhilarating masterwork. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Ahmed El Maanouni's film, restored from the original 16mm camera and sound negatives, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
REVENGE [ MEST' ] | A film by Ermek Shinarbaev | 1989 | Kazakhstan | 96 minutes | 1.37:1 original aspect ratio
Set largely in Korea and China, and spanning the 1910s to 1940s, Ermek Shinarbaev's epic masterpiece unites the resonant pictoriality of certain Far Eastern cinema with a mysticism rooted in the Russian tradition: a fitting and harmonic convergence for this collaboration (one of three) between the Kazakh director and Korean-Russian writer Anatoli Kim.
A rural schoolteacher, Jan, murders a pupil, the young daughter of a family under whom he had previously been a tenant. The father, Caj [pronounced "Tsaiya"], tracks him to China to exact revenge – but at at the moment of vengeance, Caj cannot act. He returns home only to take a concubine, who in turn bears him a son: Sungu, a prodigious composer of verse. At Caj's deathbed, the boy is informed he has been brought into the world purely for the sake of vengeance; he takes an oath to annihilate Jan.
Tonally, Revenge exhibits an extraordinary use of natural light that lends the figures an almost ethereal incandescence in the picture's first half; the second half of the film shifts into a no-less-impressive palate that is ally to late-Tarkovskyan naturalism. A narrative broken into seven chapters, and constructed in a full-circle that creates a visual and spoken summary of Sungu's poetic universe, Revenge is, to quote the critic Kent Jones, "a true odyssey, geographically and psychologically. One of the greatest films to emerge from the Kazakh New Wave, and also one of the toughest." The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Revenge, restored from the original camera negative with the involvement of Ermek Shinarbaev, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Glorious new restorations of three neglected masterworks of world cinema, all presented in 1080p HD
• Exclusive video introductions to each film by Martin Scorsese
• 80-page book featuring writing by Kent Jones on Revenge, Bilge Ebiri on Trances, archival documentation and imagery, and more to be announced
• Optional English subtitles on each film
• More features to be announced closer to release date
5 June 2013
Watch 20 Minute Behind The Scenes Documentary On Martin Scorsese's After Hours
When you dive through the archives you always come across a film you didn't realise they made or just simply forgotten about. Back in 1980's it's common knowledge Scorsese attempted to direct The Last Temptation of Christ but something prevented him for making it but in 1985 instead he made one of his most underrated films After Hours.
Like many little unknown films it's years later before you really appreciate the quality of what you've just watched. After Hours is a kafka-esque surreal black comedy starring Griffin Dunne a young man who crosses paths with a pretty young girl (Rosanna Arquette) at a coffee shop in what turns into a unforgettable night but when you think nothing can go wrong, things go wrong drastically.
The good folks at No Film School have come across this 20 minute documentary which has a brief look at the film talking to the cast especially Dunne and of course Scorsese. You can here some of the reasons why Last Temptation of Christ never materialized but could you say Scorsese has made an movie like this again? Highly unlikely, there's also about 8 or 9 minutes of deleted scenes to be watched here to in a video that's actually quite funny overall too.
27 November 2011
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