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‘Gone Girl’ author boards next project from ’12 Years A Slave’ director

After jumping into the film world with her adaptation of her own work with Gone Girl, it seems like Gillian Flynn will be moving forward with a project that has her working with one of the latest directors to take home an Oscar for Best Picture. Deadline reported on Friday that Flynn is set to …

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Week in Review: Details revealed about Spike Lee’s Kickstarter movie

Back in August 2013, Spike Lee launched plans for his newest movie on Kickstarter, causing a big hullabaloo in the process. People questioned whether an established director like him was taking money away from other independent filmmakers and projects, even though he clarified that more people came to Kickstarter who had never heard of the …

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The Definitive Kubrickian Films: 10-1

What’s difficult about making this list is finding a balance between a successful Kubrickian film that either predates or pays homage to Kubrick and, for lack of a better term, is a ripoff. Now that we’ve hit the apex, it’s clear that these are, regardless of influence, quality films. What sets them apart is their …

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Listen to Harry Belafonte’s speech about cinema and race at the NYFCC Awards

Awards ceremonies, while giving critics a chance to award the movies they feel are most deserving of praise, often also give people an opportunity to discuss cinema and what it means to them, as well as the impact film has on larger societal aspects. One such reflection occurred at the 2013 New York Film Critics …

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Slavery in Cinema as Polar Opposites in ‘Django Unchained’ and ’12 Years a Slave’

Two films about slavery in the United States have been released barely a year apart. One is by a renegade American auteur starring American actors; the other, based on a memoir, brought to the screen by a British video artist and a cast led by Brits playing American. Despite their similar subject matter, they are …

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’12 Years a Slave’ Movie Review – Can’t match the intensity of McQueen’s first two features

Welcome to our “12 Years a Slave” Reviews. Review #1 12 Years a Slave Written by John Ridley Directed by Steve McQueen USA, 2013 With Hunger and Shame, Steve McQueen crafted two highly divergent, yet equally distinctive character studies of men whose respective physical existences are defined by extremity. Hunger’s Bobby Sands stays true to his political convictions in …

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Steve McQueen photographed by John Dominis

John Dominis is best known for his work at LIFE magazine, a publication who initially hired him to cover the Korean War in 1950. Among his memorable essays Dominis covered the 1956 Olympics in Australia; water buffaloes and their boy keepers in Thailand; the celebrations for Buddha’s 2500th birthday in Burma; the early years of …

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Eight Counts of Grand Theft Cinema

We love crime movies. We may go on and on about Scorsese’s ability to incorporate Italian neo-realism techniques into Mean Streets (1973), the place of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) in the canon of postwar noir, The Godfather (1972) as a socio-cultural commentary on the distortion of the ideals of the American dream blah …

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Where to Next? An Ode to the Importance of the Festival Circuit

With this weekend’s Total Recall cashing in on a trend we could conceivably never see the end of (at least in this lifetime), the question I’m posing refers to what we have to look forward to, but not from bombastic, shallow-minded “anti-auteurs;” we look instead to the distinguished festival elite. Putting aside the innumerable trademarks …

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‘Union Square’ can sometimes feel like a short film stretched and contrived into a feature

Union Square Directed by Nancy Savoca Written by Nancy Savoca USA, 2011 In New York City, a shamelessly flamboyant Lucy (Mira Sorvino) arrives in Manhattan from the Bronx, hoping to escape a cascade of emotional problems. In search of an oasis amongst the vast concrete jungle, Lucy finds her way to the doorsteps of Jenny …

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Seven great rebel portraits of the ’60s and ’70s

The French gave us the word “demimonde” – literally, half the world. But what it has come to mean in English, or so says Webster, is “a distinct circle or world that is often an isolated part of a larger world.” Storytellers have always held a fascination with the dark side of human nature; that …

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Movies From An Alternate Universe

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 …

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Ricky D’s 50 Favourite Films of 2011 + favorite performances, director and more

I always hear people say they don’t make movies like they used to.Well truthfully they don’t, but they still make great movies each and every year. 2011 was another successful year and while I only listed about 50 films below, I honestly could have stretched the list to at least 75 movies I’d feel comfortable …

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SOS Staff Gateway Films: Bill Mesce – ‘The Magnificent Seven’

Throughout November, SOS staffers will be discussing the movies that made them into film fanatics. (click here for the full list) There was no a-ha! moment, no seeing of the light, no epiphany.  I’d loved movies since I was a kid, had been a buff since my early teens, but there was no one, shining …

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Ten Filmmakers Who Should Have Directed The Great Gatsby

Though time will only tell if Baz Luhrmann is the right filmmaker to tackle The Great Gatsby, I remain a skeptic. The material may suggest a certain grandiosity that Luhrmann has proved to be able to bring to life but the story remains fundamentally simple and down to earth. The novel is highly critical of …

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55th BFI London Film Festival: ‘Shame’ serious drama for adults, in more ways than one

Shame Directed by Steve McQueen Written by Steve McQueen UK, 2011 New York city hasn’t looked so beautifully cold and ironically isolating for quite some time as it does in Shame, Steve McQueen’s second collaboration with everyone’s favourite actor Michael Fassbender, the recipient of the best actor gong  at Venice for his brave and penetrating performance of a …

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Telluride 2011, Day 4: ‘Shame’, ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’, Tilda, and the future of film history

Telluride 2011, Day 4 Tilda Swinton is the ideal Telluride guest. She’s just famous enough to provide the fest with a bit of an exclusive sheen, but she has more than enough credibility as an artist to suit the fest’s reputation of catering to people who are serious about film. At the public tribute and …

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