Christopher Nolan recently announced a new project entitled Quay, a documentary short about two British stop-motion animators. Set to premiere next week, it’s a far cry from Nolan’s blockbusters in both scope and subject matter. Yet it’s clearly a personal project, with Nolan using his clout and money to promote two obscure filmmakers. Every artist …
Hollywood has had a long love affair with the heist sub-genre. Dating as far back as the silent film era with 1928’s Alias Jimmy Valentine, and transcending various genres like westerns (The War Wagon), war (Kelly’s Heroes) and even animation (Toy Story 3), the heist has tantalized our fantasies and outsmarted our wits for decades. …
If Christopher Nolan is not the most popular, talented, influential or even interesting director working today, then he is certainly the most important. The release of a Christopher Nolan movie, even one that “underperforms” at the box office like this week’s Interstellar, is by far the most fervently talked about work of art for several …
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, whose title alone in reference to the director’s name equals cinematic moxie, has the makings of a filmmaker putting his direction, vision and ideas to the test, where a running time of 169 minutes set in milieus that rocket from one plane of existence to the titular other — the interstellar, infinite …
With November Man out, excitement for Pierce Bosnan’s return to spying is at an all-time high for many James Bond fans. November Man, based on the seventh installment of Bill Granger’s book series called There Are No Spies, is about ex- CIA agent Peter Devereaux (Pierce Bosnan). While living a quiet life in Switzerland, Devereaux …
Christopher Nolan has earned carte blanche by dint of not just vision and execution but depth; he always buries material under the surface. Are you watching closely?
The difficulty in counting down films so clearly influenced by Kubrick is that there are certain directors who are just tailor-made for it. So, you start to run into situations like this section of the list, where two directors have two films and two other directors had a film mentioned in the last section. But …
Chances are if you’ve seen a movie in the last 10 years, you’ve heard a Hans Zimmer score. Zimmer, a German composer and music producer, is responsible for over 100 scores since the mid-1980s. He’s one of the most popular composers today, scoring for major directors like Ron Howard, Christopher Nolan, and Guy Ritchie. Most …
The Sixth Sense has come and gone as has its (alleged) twist ending. It’s hard to categorize The Sixth Sense but like The Shining or Inception I shall dub it as part of the puzzle picture genre that keeps appearing then disappearing only to come back. At first sight, the very existence of puzzle pictures …
*Exclaimer: Please don’t read this if you haven’t seen Inception, The Empire Strikes Back, Planet of the Apes, The Wizard of Oz, Saw, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense – As a probable testament to my poor academic acumen, I cannot, in good memory, recall the particulars of the situation …
A while back we posted an article titled Alternate Universe Movie Posters, a collection of some really amazing alternate movie posters including one for a Halloween film starring Kim Novak and Robert Mitchum. Recently Peter Stults was inspired by those poster designs and decided to move forward with the theme by creating images for what …
Anyone who saw Memento upon release surely could never envisage the career path that its London-born director, Christopher Nolan, would take,moving from hugely impressive small, independent films to being the king of big budget and, along with Darren Aronofsky, surely Hollywood’s premier filmmaker. The crescendo of this status will come this summer, with the opening …
The 37th Annual Saturn Awards were held this weekend and The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films honored the best film to Inception with no surprise. Other winners in the top categories include Fringe for Best Network Series, Breaking Bad for best Cable Series, Let Me In for Best Horror Film, Alice in …
The big-budget (usually summer) blockbuster is the financial cornerstone of the American motion picture industry, and has been for much of the last 35 years or so. In all its forms – action/adventure, suspense, Western, war story, horror, science fiction, fantasy, et al – the big budget thriller’s earning power is unmatched by any other …
Well it’s a new day and here is yet another montage, the second in two days. Lucky for us, it’s just as great. Yesterday we showed you A Brief History of Title Design. This time however, it’s the work of youtuber Hatinhand. He brings us a montage sequence of amazing movie ending spoilers. Overall there …
Warning: spoilers for The Adjustment Bureau (and all the other films discussed) follow. The Adjustment Bureau may have been marketed with the line ‘Bourne meets Inception’ (which it attributes to Total Film, though I can’t find this line in Jonathan Crocker’s review) but it’s a softer, sweeter film than that comparison suggests. And although it …
I will leave the discussion of what/who won/didn’t win and why/why not to others. I have only one concern: Did it work? For the now befuddled, let me recap what I laid out back in January when the 2011 Academy Award nominations were announced: A year earlier, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences …
In Part 2 of our Oscar prediction special, Justine and Simon weigh in on the remaining major categories, including the main event, Best Picture, on which they are split – will it be initial frontrunner The Social Network, or insurgent award-winner The King’s Speech? Each has their own (probably dubious) reasoning – but of course …
Are you already sick of Oscar coverage? Tough luck, ’cause Justine and Simon have some thoughts on the major categories at this year’s festivities, so if you’re planning an Oscar pool – well, maybe look elsewhere, ’cause frankly Simon’s batting average isn’t all that great. (Just ask his wallet.) Anyway, in this first installment, they’ll …
Vanity Fair have released their annual compilation listing of the top 40 earners in Hollywood breaking every total down into upfront fees, back-end, and ancilliary revenue. It seems the top earner is estimated to have grossed more than the second, third and fourth earners combined. The list features both actors and producer/directors and only calculates …
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was not, originally, in the award-awarding business. In fact, the Academy (founded by some of the early Hollywood moguls i.e. Louis Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks, and Jack Warner, among others) didn’t get around to handing out the little gold men until 1929 — two years after AMPAS’ creation. …
In what has to be a shocking development, Christopher Nolan was snubbed in the Best Director category for his brilliant work on Inception. This is the second time that Christopher Nolan has gotten snubbed. I wonder what he has to do to get nominated. Inception still made it into the ten along with 127 Hours, …
The nominations for this year’s César Awards (France’s Oscar equivalent) has been announced. In addition the awards ceremony has also chosen Quentin Tarantino as the recipient of the ceremony’s honorary award. Alain Terzian, the president of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma announced at a press conference this morning confirmed that the director …