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Entries in politics (392)

Sunday
Jan132019

Interview: Nadine Labaki on directing children in her riveting Oscar contender "Capernaum"

by Nathaniel R

Nadine Labaki is three-for-three. Lebanon's most prominent filmmaker has seen all three of her films premiere at Cannes to considerable acclaim and go on to represent her country as Oscar submissions. The first two Caramel (2007) and Where Do We Go Now? (2011) became international arthouse hits. Her newest feature Capernaum, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, recently began its platform release in the US and will hopefully see the same warm reception. It's her best shot yet at an Oscar nomination, having made the finals in foreign film. Her Cannes jury prize winner looks at the refugee crisis in Lebanon by focusing on one Syrian boy named Zain (played by Zain Al Rafeea) who is trying to survive on his own. It's a visceral must-see and should elevate Labaki's already healthy reputation as a world class director.

To my surprise, she isn't sure what she's doing next, admitting that this one has been particularly hard to let go of...

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Thursday
Jan102019

Double Feature: On the Basis of Sex & RBG

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

It’s not uncommon for documentaries and narrative features about the same subject to be released around the same time. In some cases, the impetus for a narrative film comes from the success of a documentary, as with recent Robert Zemeckis' movies the The Walk and Welcome to Marwen, which told the same stories as the hit docs Man on Wire  and Marwencol, respectively. 2010 saw concurrent releases of documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money and the feature Casino Jack.

This season's double feature is undeniably inspired by the need to champion strong women in the face of divisive times. Who better than civil rights icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second female justice appointed to the Supreme Court, to serve as the figurehead for two very different movies in 2018?

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Thursday
Jan032019

Four Random Thoughts on "Vice"

by Eric Blume

Adam McKay’s film Vice has been out in theaters for two weeks or so now, and as we head into Golden Globe weekend where it leads the nominations, we ought to discuss it a bit more. Here are some thoughts about the film, which do carry SPOILERS, not about story points (as unfortunately these things really happened), but about just how truly odd this film is in so many ways...

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Thursday
Dec272018

Months of Meryl: The Post (2017)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 


#52 — Katharine “Kay” Graham, pioneering Washington Post publisher who authorized the printing of the Pentagon Papers.

JOHN: Since it was first announced in March of 2017, deep into the first hundred days of the Trump presidency, The Post moved at a breakneck speed from rewriting to shooting to post-production before it quickly arrived in theaters in December of that year. Spielberg had paused production on his historical drama The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and after reading a spec script by Liz Hannah, set the gears into motion on The Post, assembling his usual team (cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, composer John Williams, editor Michael Kahn, among others), along with two screen legends who had never before shared a single frame. This urgent sense of timeliness is palpable in The Post, which is both a riveting period piece about a landmark historical moment and a rousing paean to the free press in our distressing present...

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Thursday
Dec132018

Months of Meryl: Suffragette (2015)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 


#50 —
Emmeline Pankhurst, key leader of the women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom.

JOHN: Vandalizing storefronts, detonating mailboxes, carrying out prison hunger strikes — these are but a few of the risky tactics employed by women in the British suffrage movement in and around London circa 1912. Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette chronicles the movement’s pivot to such dangerous gambles in an effort to draw attention and spark action for the cause. “Deeds, not words” became the new mantra after years of respectable yet unsuccessful solicitation of a woman’s right to vote. These radical activists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and visionaries like Emily Wilding Davison, Edith New, and scores of others, believed that civil disobedience and militant action were the only ways to disrupt the status quo and achieve women’s suffrage. This crucial moment of history has rarely been represented on screen, save for glimpses of the movement in Mary Poppins or in a handful of documentaries, despite the exciting and provocative elements inherent in this important story.

Unfortunately, “Important Story” could appropriately serve as the tagline and governing principle of Gavron’s misguided though well-intentioned film...

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