In one of those strange coincidences, I happened to buy a new DVD player the other week, and the film I chose to christen it with was The English Patient. It’s one of my favourite films, an unashamedly epic romance played out across the burning sands of Cairo, a self-conscious throwback to the kind of Technicolor splendour you associate with David Lean’s movies.
Neil Young, like Dylan, has a lot to live up to. Most obviously, he has to contend with his own reputation, and the expectations of his audience: two things which are not entirely compatible.
We were chatting the other day in the office about music documentaries, on the back of a forthcoming doc celebrating Arthur Lee and Love. The consensus we reached was that, often, music docs seem not to utilize the same language as other documentaries, or even movies, do; the results often frustrating affairs, often borderline inept in their rather simplistic "point and shoot" technique.
Which brings me, in a rather windy way, to Bruce Weber’s 1988 doc on Chet Baker, Let’s Get Lost, that’s due a theatrical re-release in the UK in June, and a DVD release shortly after.
Now that Masterchef is over – oh, well done James, but rats, I still think it should have been Emily – normal service has been resumed on the blog. I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on some DVDs, as well as finally getting round to seeing a fantastic Spanish horror film, The Orphanage.
I’ve just got off the phone with BBC Radio Kent who, in the preamble to this Sunday’s Academy Awards, were asking me, among other things, for my thoughts on who might win in the Best Song category.
Here's the second report from this year's Berlin Film Festival by our man in the lederhosen, Stephen Dalton...
It’s the end of a bitingly cold weekend here in Berlin, where the 2008 Berlinale Film Festival has just closed its doors for another year. Among the glittering gongs handed out at Saturday’s prize-giving ceremony was a special Silver Bear honouring Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood for his soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD. A fitting finale to a film festival where rock stars have hogged the headlines.
Stephen Dalton brings you his first report from this year's Berlin Film Festival...
Guten Tag from the 2008 Berlin film festival, which is already shaping up to be more like a gathering of gold-plated Glastonbury headliners than movie makers and shakers. The ROLLING STONES have stopped the traffic, NEIL YOUNG has bashed George Bush and PATTI SMITH strummed her guitar during the press conference for her new film.
The nominations are just in for the 2008 Oscars, so here’s my first impressions of what’s what in the major categories. It’s no great shock to see No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood leading the field (8 nominations a piece), but there’s certainly a few surprises…
Here, anyway, are the nominations in the main categories.
