Classic Hollywood To Get Spotlight At 2014 Glasgow Film Festival

After enjoying its most successful year ever in 2013, Glasgow Film Festival is delighted to announce some very special developments along with the programme strands for the tenth annual festival.

Opening in 2005 with 68 films over ten days, GFF has grown into the third-biggest film festival in the UK, with over 39,000 admissions to 368 events at the 2013 Festival, fifty-seven UK premiere screenings and seven world premieres, and guests including major names like Joss Whedon, John C Reilly, Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan.

2014 is also a significant anniversary for Glasgow Film Theatre, the art deco cinema in which the Festival originated and which remains its headquarters. The Cosmo, which was only the second purpose-built arthouse cinema in the UK, opened its doors seventy five years ago in 1939, undergoing a makeover and reopening as Glasgow Film Theatre forty years ago in 1974. The full 2014 programme, which will include a number of anniversary celebrations, will be revealed on Tuesday 21 January 2014.

NEW PROGRAMME STRANDS FOR 2014

1939: Hooray for Hollywood!

As well as birthing The Cosmo, 1939 was also a very significant year for Hollywood cinema, widely regarded as Hollywood’s greatest year ever. 365 films were released, 80 million tickets a week were sold, and the Best Picture award nominees at the 1939 Oscars were Gone With The Wind, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Dark Victory, Love Affair, Goodbye Mr Chips, Ninotchka, Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Of Mice and Men, and The Wizard of Oz. Rather than celebrating the achievement of an individual actor in the popular retrospective programme strand, this year GFF will be screening all of those films, beginning with a palette-whettening advance screening of Gone With The Wind at GFT in December, and bringing a touch of Old Hollywood glamour to a Glasgow winter.

CineChile

The Festival’s country focus this year is on Chile, where filmmaking has recently been energised by two large international successes, No (starring Gael Garcia Bernal) and Gloria (for which Paulina Garcia won Best Actress at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival). GFFis delighted to be able to draw attention to the breadth of excellent, innovative work coming from the skinniest of countries.

Pop-Up Cinema

GFF’s audience-focused programmes are designed to bring cinema to the whole city, with boutique screenings and cinematic experiences in a huge variety of unusual locations. At GFF13, audiences went underground to watch The Warriors in the bowels of the Glasgow Subway system, witnessed Jaws and Dead Calm from the cargo hold of the Tall Ship Glenlee, encountered the silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc, with live soprano soundtrack, in the vaulted surroundings of Glasgow Cathedral, and donned Stetsons for a barn dance and screening of Calamity Jane at the Grand Ole Opry, Glasgow’s long-running country and western saloon. This year, there will be a themed pop-up event on every night of the Festival apart from the opening and closing galas, taking in more venues across the city than ever before. Selected events will be announced in December 2013.

COMPLETE LIST OF PROGRAMME STRANDS AT GFF14

·     1939: Hooray For Hollywood! All the Best Picture Oscar nominees from Hollywood’s Greatest Year.

·     Best of British Brand new films and much-loved classics from all over the UK.

·     CineChile  Recent releases from a country bursting with exciting new cinema talent. INCLUDES The Illiterate (Las Analfabetas), Crystal Fairy, The Quispe Sisters (Las Ninas Quispe), The Summer of Flying Fish (El Verano de los Peces Voladores), Things the Way They Are (La Cosas Como Son), Violet Went to Heaven (Violeta Se Fue a los Cielos)

·     Crossing the Line Open your mind to experimental and artist films from Glasgow and across the world. 2014’s programme will include the world premiere of Happy and Glorious, a new film commission by upcoming video artist and recent Jarman Award nominee, Rachel Maclean, the winner of GFF13’s prestigious Margaret Tait Award.

·     Eurovisions Romcoms from Romania, Swedish sci fi or noir from the Netherlands? Could be, as we take a gander at the best new cinema from the continent.

·     FrightFest The horror institution takes over Screen 1 at GFT for the final weekend of the Festival for back-to-back screenings and an advance wallow in the gore of the finest, freakiest new horror movies.

·     Gala The big ones. Gala screenings, red carpet events and premieres. Are you ready for your closeup?

·     Game Cats Go Miaow! As computer games now regularly beat the biggest Hollywood box office takings, is video set to kill the movie star too?  Ace gamer Robert Florence, best known from BBC comedy sketch show Burnistoun, is back with irreverent events, screenings and probably a house party to celebrate the rise of the pixel.

·     Glasgow Music and Film Festival An inspired programme of live music events, features and rockumentaries celebrating the special relationships between film and music, co-curated with The Arches.

·     Glasgow Short Film Festival (13-16 February 2014) Scotland’s leading short film showcase returns for four days of screenings, events and parties dedicated to emerging film talent here and around the globe.  Four awards are up for grabs, including the prestigious Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film, and this year's programme includes a focus on emerging Irish talent, avant-garde 16mm films from Japan, explorations of sound and cinema and much more. www.glasgowfilm.org/gsff 

·     Glasgow Youth Film Festival (2-12 February 2014) Showcasing the best contemporary international cinema for and by young people alongside workshops, masterclasses, competitions and special events. Our Youth Film Festival is the only festival of its kind in Europe to be curated and programmed entirely by 15-17 year olds, with films representing issues faced by young people alongside events and workshops for those thinking about getting into the movie business. www.glasgowfilm.org/gyff

·     Great Scots A celebration of native talent and local heroes with screenings of the best new productions from Scottish filmmakers and Scottish production companies.

·     It’s a Wonderful World Globetrotting without a passport – brilliant titles from all over the world.

·     Kapow! Biff! Bang! Kapow! Comic book legend and Fox creative consultant Mark Millar, creator of Kick-Ass, is back to curate our strand dedicated to cult movies and the rise of the superhero.

·     Out of the Past Classic movies in peak condition back on the big screen, where they come alive all over again.

·     Pop Up Cinema and Special Events Cinema experiences in strange and unusual locations, and distinguished guests in conversation.

·     Stranger than Fiction An exceptional selection of the best new documentary releases.

Allan Hunter, Co-Director of Glasgow Film Festival:‘The Festival has grown and developed in ways that we couldn't have imagined in 2005. It has been nurtured and sustained by the enthusiasm and passionate dedication of audiences from near and far who have come to regard Glasgow as their Festival and an event they can trust to bring them the best cinematic experiences, the most accessible guests and the most affordable prices. We take the bond of trust with our audiences very seriously and look forward to presenting them with a 2014 programme that matches their expectations of what a Film Festival should be and how a special anniversary should be celebrated.’

As ever expect Cinehouse to cover this festival with it been our local festival and if you enjoyed this years festival 2014 will be something special with it been 10th Anniversary as well as the 75th for the festival's main and grandest venue GFT.

Update 29th November 2013
The festival's official trailer trailer has been check it out below

Studio Ghibli's The Wind Rises U.S Trailer Flies Online, Is it Miyazaki's Swan Song?

When a new trailer for the latest Studio Ghibli film lands online it's always a ray of excitement brings a smile to anyone's face but it seems this one has extra reason to enjoy. The Wind Rises is been tipped as the farewell movie for Hayao Miyazaki who will retire but the question is will it be? Enjoy the American trailer...

The Wind Rises is inspired by Miyazaki's own personal dreams, the film centres around Jiro a young man inspired to become a aeronautical engineer. The Wind Rises is  the epic tale of love, perseverance, and the challenges of living and making choices in a turbulent world.The film is set in the first half of the 20th Century and will chronicle major events of his life from falling in love right upto Japan entering World War 2 a pivotal event in Jiro's career.

Despite been the U.S trailer there is no dialogue possibly that the American voice cast has not been chosen or the dub is finish.Visually you don't voice cast to release the trailer, visuals are nothing less but beautiful shame we don't get a sample tease of the sound design as early reviews praise it to the rafters. Will it get Studio Ghibli it's second Oscar? The talk is The Wind Rises will be in the nominations but id this film is the last Hayao Miyazaki film what better way to go out with a little gold statue!

No word on the UK release date we expect Studiocanal UK to do the honours releasing the film probably sometime in summer 2014, for USA release is 21st February 2014.

Synopsis

In “The Wind Rises,” Jiro—inspired by the famous Italian aeronautical designer Caproni—dreams of flying and designing beautiful airplanes. Nearsighted from a young age and thus unable to become a pilot, Jiro joins the aircraft division of a major Japanese engineering company in 1927. His genius is soon recognized, and he grows to become one of the world’s most accomplished airplane designers. The film chronicles much of his life, and depicts key historical events that deeply affected the course of Jiro’s life, including the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Great Depression, the tuberculosis epidemic and Japan’s plunge into war. He meets and falls in love with Nahoko, and grows and cherishes his friendship with his colleague Honjo. A tremendous innovator, Jiro leads the aviation world into the future. Miyazaki pays tribute to engineer Jiro Horikoshi and author Tatsuo Hori in his creation of the fictional character Jiro—the center of the epic tale of love, perseverance, and the challenges of living and making choices in a turbulent world.

source:TheHollywoodNews

Master Of Expressionism - F.W Murnau

F.W Murnau along with Fritz Lang were THE German Expressionist filmmakers of the 1920s. Murnau made such films as Nosferatu, Faust and later in the United States Sunrise. His films often at considered some of the finest ever made.

Murnau was born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in 1888. Not surprisingly he started in theatre but he was also a devout student of art history and literature. Murnau joined the airforce and survived 8 crashes. He was interned in Switzerland but he actually won an award for a play he staged in interment camp. It’s commonly believed Murnau was gay and his first true love was killed during World War 1 and this had a serious psychological impact on the young Murnau.

After the war finishes he quickly starts a film company with Conrad Veidt (Cesare in Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). They made quite a few films together but sadly not uncommon with silent films almost all of those are lost and most sadly their version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was an unauthorized adaptation but no legal action was taken unlike the case of Nosferatu.

During the first half of the 1920s he could average about 3 films a year. The earliest surviving film of Murnau’s is Journey into the Night and the surviving prints were only found this year. The first film of his which is widely available in Schloß Vogelöd that is rather spooky chamber drama with mystery elements. Murnau followed it with Marizza (only a fragment remains) and The Burning Spoil, which Eric Rohmer assisted in its restoration, but there is no home video release sadly.

Nosferatu is unarguably his most well known film and possibly his masterpiece, even though the case has been made for the later Sunrise. The production of Nosferatu is almost as interesting as the film itself; so much so a largely fictionalised take on it was made as Shadow of the Vampire. It’s the only and one film made by Prana film that was created by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist Albin Grau who was also a member of Fraternitas Saturni, a magical order in German.

Prana film was meant to specialize in occult theme films but due to the lawsuit that Bram Stoker’s wife filed due to the unauthorized adaption of Dracula it went bankrupt. Nosferatu in many ways is not a Murnau film because it was very much Albin Grau’s baby. The idea of doing a vampire film came out of his war experience of hearing a Serbian farmer telling him how his father was a vampire.

Nosferatu came out to relatively lukewarm reviews. The French surrealists really loved the film so much so that in one of André Breton’s books he recites a dream he had of a neck tie that became the likeness of Nosferatu and the intertitle “We he crossed the bridge, the phantom came to greet him” inspired him greatly. Nosferatu has probably inspired more people than any other silent film from everyone from Werner Herzog with his wonderful re-imagining to Abel Ferrara’s vampire film The Addiction.

The film was basically pulled from circulation due to Bram Stoker’s widow suing the filmmakers for the unauthorized adapted of his husband’s novel and won. The filmmakers were forced burn all the negatives but luckily one got all the way to the United States. The many prints over the years were made from this single negative even though they vary in many lengths. The film could have easily been lost like many of Murnau’s other films and has since become one of the most consistently screened silent films.

Phantom was Murnau’s follow up to Nosferatu, which is a very dreamy film that is about a young man who becomes obsessed with this girl and will do anything to find her again. It was considered lost for many years but it was found and restored and eventually came out on dvd by Eureka. Muranu’s next key film is The Last Laugh that is one of his chamber dramas and interestingly enough has barely any intertitles and no intertitles that are dialogue. It was a big success and he was able to Tartuffe and Faust both were made with a much larger budget.

Faust is obviously the old German tale of Faust who sells his soul to the devil. Faust is a special effects spectacular in the vein of Metropolis due to its scale at times. Universum Film AG put Faust into production and until Metropolis the year after was it’s biggest budget film. It’s by far his 2nd most widely seen German silent after Nosferatu. It’s remains one of the finest adaptations of Faust to date and is still a truly stunning film to watch today.

Murnau was already shooting his next film Sunrise in the United States for 20th Century Fox when Faust premiered in Germany. Many critics consider Sunrise his crowning achievement it’s a German expressionist film by a Hollywood Studio and is a beautiful love story. It would later win the “Unique and Artistic Production” at the first Academy Awards which was kind of like the equivalent to best film today. He continued making more films in America till he died tragically of complications because of a car crash. It was a week before his final film Tabu.

Murnau to this day remains one of the most innovative directors in the history of film. Nosferatu and Sunrise will be what he is remembered for but there are plenty of other great German expressionist films he made in the 20s. We can all hope some of his lost films get found some day. Eureka under their masters of Cinema imprint has released the majority of his available German and American films including a beautifully restored blu-ray of his Gothic masterpiece Nosferatu.

Ian Schultz

Nosferatu is now available in a new fully restored version available Monday 25th November on [Blu-ray]and [DVD]. Read our recent cinema release review.

Review - Blue Is The Warmest Colour (La vie d'Adèle)

Genre:
Drama, World Cinema, Arthouse
Rating:
18
Distributor:
Artificial Eye Film
Release Date:
22nd November 2013 (UK)
Director:
Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast:
Léa Seydoux, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Salim Kechiouche
Blue in the Warmest Colour was the winner of the Palme D’Or with a jury headed by Steven Spielberg. It’s been universally acclaimed since it’s premiere at Cannes but it’s a very problematic film for many reasons. Abdellatif Kechiche directed the film but the two lead actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux have heavily criticised his techniques and refuse to every work with him again.

The film’s story is ridiculously simple considering it’s 3 hour running time. The story is a coming age story of Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is coming to terms with her own sexuality, she realises she is attracted to women but tries to fit it. She has sex with boys but spots a blue haired girl with another girl and instantly is attracted to her. One night she goes to a gay bar with gay male friend but she wanders off to a Lesbian bar and she meets the blue haired girl Emma (Léa Seydoux) again and they become friends. Emma is currently in a relationship but she soon becomes involved with Adèle. They seem very much in love but as usual with love it’s up and down.

Blue in the Warmest Colour has attracted much controversy for it’s 10 minute + graphic sex scene. The scene in many ways deserves controversy because it’s gratuitous to the extreme and was clearly shot to get the pervy director off. It’s not really very shocking except for the fact it just goes on and on, it’s the sex scene equivalent of the famous fight scene in They Live! The film climaxes with an equally gratuitous scene in a restaurant and every scene in the film is overly long for no good reason except for titillation.

The film’s length however is much more problematic because it’s an extremely simple love story. It’s one minute shy of 3 hours and it’s a story that could be told easily in 2 hours if not shorter. The story follows like 2 years in the lives of the girls but remember Stanley Kubrick told the story of dawn of man to the dawning of a new species in under 2 and a half hours in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Abdellatif Kechiche desperately needs an editor cause from all accounts this has been a criticism of his previous film but I can’t comment cause I haven’t seem them.

It’s not without two fantastic performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux who will both became big international stars in coming years. They seem so natural and at ease in their performances it’s not hard to believe them to be love with one another. They were awarded for the first time ever the Palme D’Or for their performances with they shared with the director.

The film looks to be an art house smash this year but the audience for the screening I went to at the Leeds Film Festival was utterly bizarre. The cinema was full of lesbians, straight couples and inept film nerds so the audience for the film is quite wide ranging. I can only assume it’s going to become a date movie cause it’s deemed “the sexiest film ever made” in one ludicrous review and some straight couples want to try out one of the “moves” on their significant other.

Overall it’s not the raw, powerful, sexy, intense film that the critics are saying it is. The film however is a very fine drama, which nobody would care about if it weren’t for the fact it’s about young lesbians, has 2 great performance, won the Palme D’or and has this controversy. It’s worth seeing but it does not live up to the hype it has gathered since its premiere in the French Riviera.

★★★½☆

Ian Schultz

Blu-Ray Review - Streets Of Fire (1984)

Genre:
Action, Crime
Distributor:
Second Sight
Release Date:
18th November 2013 (UK)
Director:
Walter Hill
Cast:
Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, Willem Dafoe
Buy:
Streets of Fire [Blu-ray]

Streets of Fire is directed by Walter Hill and is one of the most absurdly 80s films ever made. It was described as “ a rock n’ roll fantasy” in it’s marketing and I guess it is. It’s kind of like The Wanderers but as a dumb 80s action film with horrible musical numbers and none of the substance of The Wanderers. It was a mega flop but has grown to have a cult fan base so much an unofficial sequel was made.

The whole thing is set in this 80s drenched future that is partly 1950s which gives it an interesting aesthetic. The plot is basically this singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) gets kidnapped by the Bombers gang lead by Raven Shaddock (Willem Dafoe) and Tom Cody (Michael Paré) must rescue her. The musical numbers are wretchedly 80s that start and bookmark the film that really ruins the good comic book aesthetic of the rest of the film.

Walter Hill is a very fine director who made films like The Warriors, The Driver, Southern Comfort among others. Streets of Fire is certainly one of his lesser films and owes a lot to his previous film The Warriors. It lacks what made that film so good was your cared about the The Warriors gang and wanted them to get back to Coney Island but in this the performance by Michael Paré lacks any real humanity. The film however features a fun campy performance by Willem Dafoe as the main villain and a amusing cameo from the lead singer of seminal L.A punk band Fear Lee Ving as one of Dafoe’s main cronies.

Streets of Fire is perfectly watchable but Walter Hill has made numerous better films but it has a strange 80s charm at times which saves it from being a total disaster. It’s clear to see why it bombed though because it’s simply not that good and to off kilter at times for a mainstream audience. It was suppose to start a franchise but naturally that didn’t happen until recently with the unauthorized sequel with Paré reprising his role. Second Sight as usual has pull out all the stops with the bonus features including a feature length doc and the original EPK.

★★★☆☆

Ian Schultz

Blu-Ray Review - Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)

Genre:
Sci-fi, horror, cult
Release Date:
18th November 2013 (UK)
Distributor:
Arrow
Director:
Philip Kaufman
Cast:
Donald Sutherland, Leonord Nimoy, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Mccarthy,
Buy:
[Blu-ray] or [Blu-ray SteelBook]

Philip Kaufman unwitting started the trend of remaking classic horror films with his 1978 reimagining of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It started this trend because it was actually really good and similar remakes followed like The Thing and The Fly. Body Snatchers started life as a novel by Jack Finney and have been adapted 4 times to the silver screen. It was first made in 1956 by Don Siegel and remains the best, the aforementioned 1978 one, the underrated Abel Ferrara take in the early 90s and more the recently the version with Nicole Kidman but let’s try to forget that one.

The film’s protagonist in this take is Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) a San Franciscan heath inspector who hears from a friend Elizabeth (Brooke Adams) that her boyfriend is acting strange around her. Matthew gets his friend in touch with Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) a psychiatrist. At the same time two of his friends discovered a body that resembles one of them Jack (Jeff Goldblum) that appears to be browing. They call Matt to have a look at it and if he can help

Matt comes down to examine it and heads back to see Elizabeth and finds a pod person version of her growing. Matt gets the real Elizabeth to safety and contacts the police but soon realizes they are pod people. The invasion has started and Matt and his friends can’t fall asleep or they will become pod people as well.

Kaufman’s take is very much of its time it’s set in a post-Watergate world. It has that great 70s paranoia feel and you know from the extremely creepy opening scene something is amidst. This is refined with the inclusion of Robert Duvall’s unsettling cameo as a priest in a playground. It also includes fantastic cinematography from Michael Chapman who also shot Taxi Driver.

It’s one of the finest film remakes of its kind with only The Thing or The Fly surpassing it in quality. Kaufman is a very versatile director who has director stuff like The Wanderers and The Right Stuff and casts the film impeccably. Sutherland feel adds some gravitas to his role, which is rare in the genre. The film also features a cameo by the original film’s lead actor Kevin McCarthy which begs the question is it a remake or sequel.

The blu-ray Arrow has complied is packed to the gills with material; the real highlight is the roundtable discussion with Kim Newman, Ben Wheatley and Norman J. Warren who discuss the film at quite length. The disc also includes a really pretentious interview with Kaufman’s biographer Annette Insdorf along with an interview about Jack Finney from Jack Seabrook and some featurettes from the American MGM blu-ray and a director’s commentary.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

Review - In Fear

Genre:
Thriller, Horror, Indie
Distributor:
Studiocanal UK
Rating:
15
Release Date:
15th November 2013 (UK)
Director:
Jeremy Lovering
Cast:
alice englert, Ian de caestecker, Allen leech


The most terrifying thing to man or woman after lonilness is fear itself, it may help us to make rational thoughts to deliver positivity however Fear itself has 2 sides. There is an psychological effect which can fester terror and in Jeremy Lovering's In Fear that fear is delivered in it's simplest most effective form , well almost

In Fear is the feature directorial debut for veteran tv director Jeremy Lovering starring British upstarts Ian De Caestacker (Agents of S.h.i.e.l.d) and Alice Englert (Ginger And Rosa).They play Tom and Lucy a young couple in the early days of their relationship and heading to a music festival somewhere in Ireland.On the way to the festival venue Tom surprises Lucy by booking a night's stay at a near by country house hotel. Reluctantly Lucy agrees to go and enroute to that hotel the pair follow the signs frustration takes over when they seem to be going round in circles  terror takes over when darkness falls the penny drops when the couple believe someone is playing tricks on them.

In Fear is a lesson on how to deliver the maximum effect on screen ith the minimalist of resources. We dive head first into our primal fears as if we are experiencing the emotions Tom and Lucy are experiencing. Things do seem to work largely thanks to improv skills of our young leads who are drip fed snippets of what lay ahead for them help making their fear, genuinely convincing.

As the roads tart to encroach our young couple, tensions rise paranoia strikes as things go missing making things intense most of all claustrophobic.As Tom and Lucy are pushed to their limits the fabric of their relationship disintegrate, mysterious Max (Allen Leech) appears this is when In Fear unravels.

The last third of the film becomes cliched, outlandish even very predictable which is a crying shame as De Caestecker and Englert deliver strong raw performance.. In Fear may not deliver anything remotely new  in plot what it does do is deliver a film full of atmosphere, tension  spoiled by a frustrating ending.

★★★☆☆

Paul Devine

Review - John Pilger's Utopia

Genre:
Documentary
Rating:
12A
Release Date:
15th November 2013 (UK)
Director:
John Pilger
Watch Utopia:
cinema listing here
Film Official Website:
Enter here

In new documentary Utopia, the Australian journalist John Pilger sets out to examine the suffering felt by his native country’s indigenous population, a problem caused by the British Empire’s colonisation of Australia.

Pilger’s film is a noble attempt to highlight the poverty and awful living conditions felt by the Aboriginal people, an issue that most of the world - and Australia’s European descendants – remain blissfully unaware of. This is made evident when Pilger interviews individuals whilst they are celebrating Australia Day, enquiring as to what the original population should take away from the country’s national day. Each interviewee shows incredible ignorance of the subject, stating that the Aboriginal’s want to live that way – in shacks with no running water or functioning toilet. Pilger also conducts interviews with members – past and present – of Australia’s government whose job it was to protect these people, and failed. Footage of Aboriginal living conditions today compared with that filmed several decades ago seems to show that nothing has changed at all.

In Utopia, Pilger firmly asserts that for such a wealthy country, Australia’s indigenous people should not be living this way; and that, this vast land was in fact never for the taking in the first place. These are issues that everyone should know about, but with a long running time combined with a slow, ponderous pace, the film may not appeal to the audiences that need to be informed.

UTOPIA is in cinemas from 15 November with a Nationwide Q&A with John Pilger on Monday 18 November at Picturehouse Cinemas. Available on DVD 2 December

★★★☆☆

Sophie Stephenson

Top American History Dramas (Parkland Feature)

PARKLAND is a historical drama recounting the chaotic events that occurred in the Parkland hospital and elsewhere in Dallas following John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In anticipation of the release of the new movie, we are taking a look at the top American historical drama films in cinema.

LINCOLN (2013)

Directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln is a historical drama that follows the final four months of Lincoln’s life, primarily focusing on his efforts to have the thirteenth amendment to the United States Constitution passed by the House of Representatives. The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards winning Best Achieving in Production Design and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.

Argo (2012)

This nail biting thriller follows a CIA agent as he instigates an undercover mission to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980. The film is based on the CIA operative Tony Mendez’s book The Master of Disguise and The Great Escape by Joshuah Bearman. Argo received widespread acclaim and seven Academy Award nominations and won three, for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Picture. The film also won five Golden Globe Award nominations, winning Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director.

The Patriot (2000)

The Patriot is an American historical war film depicting the story of an American, widowed, father of seven as he is swept into the American Revolutionary War when his family threatened by the British. The protagonist, Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson), is a composite character based on four real American Revolutionary War heroes. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards and became a classic American film.

Apollo 13 (1995)

The incredibly journey of Americas’ third Moon landing aboard Apollo 13 is portrayed through this docudrama film directed by Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton. Surviving an on-board explosion which deprives the spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing an abort mission and struggling to get home, the film is packed with non-stop suspense. Apollo 13 received critical acclaim and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning two. The film grossed over $335 million worldwide during its theatrical release and is an American classic.

PARKLAND (2013)

One of the most shocking moments in TV history, and a major event in the history of the United States and the wider world, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy set in motion events that would change lives, and the world, forever. The new film Parkland retraces the actions of some of the lesser-known players on that fateful day in 1963 – the staff of the Parkland Hospital, some of the bystanders, and members of the FBI and Secret Service. A must-see, delving into the details of the people behind the scenes, Parkland is the latest film to show an important drama in US history.

PARKLAND is released in the UK on November 22nd.

Darknet Webseries Launches Online With Vincenzo Natali Episode

Adapted from Japanese series Tori Hada Darknet has launched it's episode directed by Cube,Splice director Vicenzo Natali. Described as an bitsize nightmare journies into urban horror. 'Darknet offers snippets of people's lives being interrupted by vivid instances of unexpected violence or shocking strangeness. Shot in a visceral style that cranks up the creep factor, viewers become part of Darknet, a mysterious network of disturbing imagery and stories that exist just under the surface of our ordered and safe society.'

The series will run it's full episodes exclusively via newly relaunched Canadian channel Superchannel as well as Darknet website. A total of six episodes will be aired with the first episode starring David Hewlett and Michelle Alexander whose lives become intertwined with Darknet a website where people can submit strange tales of intrigue and murder.


Source: QuietEarth