Thursday, 29 November 2012
'Gangster Squad': Released 11/1/13
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
'Moonrise Kingdom' triumphs at Gotham awards
Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson's Cannes smash about two runaway child lovers living on a remote New England island, won the top prize at the 2012 Gotham independent film awards on Monday night.
Young leads Jared Gilman, 13, and Kaya Howard, 14, accepted the best feature award at a ceremony in New York attended by Oscar winners and Hollywood glitterati. Marion Cotillard and Matt Damon received honorary awards celebrating their careers, and there was a tribute to The Fighter director David O Russell. The awards are held annually to celebrate independent film-making and represent a prelude to the coming awards season.
Of the films currently tipped for Oscars success, Benh Zeitlin won the breakthrough director prize for his sun-kissed, rain-drenched tale of life on the flood-threatened Louisiana bayou, Beasts of the Southern Wild. Zeitlin also took home the Bingham Ray award for his micro-budget drama, which used an entirely untrained cast.
Russell's own Silver Linings Playbook, which is tipped to be a rare romantic comedy success at next year's Academy Awards, lost out toYour Sister's Sister, starring Emily Blunt. The British actor was on hand to pick up the ensemble acting award with co-stars Mark Duplass and Rosemarie DeWitt. Duplass also produced the comedy – about a man who sleeps with his girlfriend's sibling – and he thanked the cast for working for just $100 a day.
The audience award went to Jared Leto's documentary Artifact, about the making of the album This Is War by the actor's band 30 Seconds to Mars and their battle with record label Virgin/EMI in 2008 and 2009. Breakthrough actor went to Emayatzy Corinealdi for Sundance-winning drama The Middle of Nowhere, ahead of Beasts of the Southern Wild's six-year-old (at the time of filming), Oscar-tipped Quvenzhané Wallis.
David France's Aids-themed How to Survive a Plague won best documentary feature, while Terence Nance's romance An Oversimplication of Her Beauty won the "best film not playing at a theater near you" award.
The Gotham awards are staged each year by the non-profit-making Independent Feature Project, which supports independent film-making. Last year's winners (sharing best feature) included Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Mike Mills' romantic comedy Beginners, about an octogenarian who comes out as gay. Malick went home empty handed at the Oscars earlier this year despite three nominations, but Beginners' Christopher Plummer won best supporting actor.
guardian.co.uk/film/2012
Thursday, 22 November 2012
How To Analyse a Film Poster
When analysing any film poster you need to consider the following points:
Begin by identifying the film and date of its release.
• Types of poster:
The Teaser poster -This poster contains basic information to whet your appetite. It often does not indicate much about the plot, but may have a picture of the stars, and the name of the film.
The main theatrical poster- This contains information about the production personnel, the stars, and the distributors.
Video/DVD release poster - This one comes out when the film is released on DVD/video and often has all of the above plus short, one line reviews from relevant publications.
Identify the Genre
eg an action film will nearly always have images of guns/weapons, a Romance will always have the 2 lovers in very close physical proximity... etc...
Character Poster – this one features the main character. Remember that the posters could be a combination of two types.
• Images of the key settings and main characters. Title ? Stars? Where are the stars’ names placed? Why? Describe the key images on your poster. Why have they been chosen? Write about the images used and what they suggest? What do you think the film will be about? Who is the target audience?
• Narrative: What clues are there to the narrative? What impression do you get of the characters from their expression, clothes, props and genre conventions?
• Colours: Are are they relevant to the genre e.g. horror posters generally use dark strong colours especially black and red to represent death and evil. Romance tend to employ lighter pastel and warm colours such as pinks, purples and other warm shades. How do they attract the target audience?
• Layout: analyse how the images are laid out. Do you know what the plot, genre and/or theme is? If so, how? Most posters are portrait or landscape in shape. What shape is it? Discuss the title, font, typeface and graphics on the poster.
• Written Text: Is there a catch or tagline? Does it state the action and genre? Who do you think is the target audience for the film? Do we get information about who is in the cast, who directed the film, which company distributes it and promotes it etc? ? What does the certificate indicate about the target audience and the content of the film? Is there a website?
Edited from:
Tuesday, 20 November 2012
Monday, 5 November 2012
Skyfall breaks UK seven-day box-office record
Sam Mendes's film posts $287m worldwide in first 10 days and has already made half Casino Royale's total before US release.
The latest James Bond film, Skyfall, is on course to be the series' highest-grossing film so far after breaking the UK seven-day box-office record and posting $287m (£180m) in its first 10 days across the globe.
The figures are all the more remarkable for Sam Mendes's film because the 23rd Bond adventure has not yet opened in the US, the world's largest market, where it is due to arrive on 8 November. Nevertheless, Daniel Craig's third turn as 007 is already almost halfway to the $594m total posted by the British actor's debut, Casino Royale, in 2006 – the previous highest Bond gross.
Skyfall had made £37.2m in the UK in its first seven days – by Friday – to overtake previous record holder Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Its domestic haul is thus far so impressive that the film is already 2012's third highest grossing movie behind The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. It may now be on course to break the record for the highest-grossing film in UK cinemas of all time, currently held by Avatar with £93.5m.
Skyfall is well ahead of the figures posted by previous Craig instalments Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace in almost all countries where it has been released, and is currently No 1 in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Germany. In the latter two countries, it made the year's biggest debuts at the weekend. Mendes's film, which stars Daniel Craig opposite villain Javier Bardem, Judi Dench as "M" and newcomers Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw, had already opened at No 1 in another 24 overseas markets last weekend.
The new film, which sees 007 crisscrossing the globe as MI6 and M come under threat from a cyberterrorist plot, is one of the best-reviewed Bond films since the Sean Connery era. Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian praised Mendes's ability to pull off "a hugely enjoyable action spectacular" in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the series, which began in 1962 with Dr No.
"From the opening in Istanbul to the final siege shootout in the Scottish Highlands, this film is a supremely enjoyable and even sentimental spectacle, giving us an attractively human (though never humane) Bond," he wrote. "Despite the title, he is a hero who just keeps on defying gravity."
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