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Astor Theatre Film Festival Review – Preview of John Huston’s “The Misfits” and John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy”

This coming Monday, the 24th of May, Astor Theatre is engaging with lonely subject matter. John Huston’s “The Misfits” (1961) and John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” (1969) both use the loneliness of the Western film genre and its cowboy archetype to discuss sexuality, landscape, alienation and the art of drifting aimlessly. Their experimentation with genre still [...]
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Review – Fatih Akin’s “Soul Kitchen”

(2/5) From the director of “Head On” and “The Edge of Heaven” I was expecting something less obvious than “Soul Kitchen”. The film is a gallery of ethnic stereotypes with a German twist. German-Greek mate Zinos, coming from the lower part of town and with a brother freshly paroling out of prison, has a bottom [...]
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Human Right Arts & Film Festival, April – May 2010 – Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane

The Human Rights Arts & Film Festival is adopting a wider media experience concerning human and social rights. It combines documentary, films, video, art exhibitions, music, poetry, forums and Q & A with authors and filmmakers. The intention is to show something different to what is usually served up in the average diet of local [...]
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Cannes 2010 line-up

Yesterday the Cannes Film Festival announced the films in competition for the 2010 edition. It contains the usual, but interesting mix of well-known returning filmmakers, as well as some new entries, which are arriving to Cannes for the first time. Some known names in this year’s competition include films by Takeshi Kitano (Outrage), Mike Leigh [...]
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Views from the Left: Politics in Contemporary Italian Cinema

After World War II, a durable relationship developed and continued between far-left politics and Italian film making. If we rewind our minds back to prominent film figures such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci, or even fast forward to active film makers today such as Nanni Moretti, a trend emerges.
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Figuring Landscapes: Moving Images from Australia and UK

Figuring Landscapes is a multifaceted title. The phrase suggests the idea of forming landscape, as in ‘configure’; it suggests analysis and interpretation of landscape, as in ‘figuring out’ the subject; it could also imply peopling the landscape with figures. It thus compresses into a single phrase the making, reading, and inhabiting of landscape, which is [...]
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DVD: “The Last Days of Disco” (Criterion)

(2.5/5) This is a disco social comedy revolving around “The Club”, a New York disco space frequented by yuppies. The film is a late rework of John Hughes’ 1980′s teenager films, set in a Jay Macinerney’ s novel, with a female protagonist (Chloë Sevigny). Two college friends, Alice and Charlotte are working together in a [...]
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The Cinema of ‘God’s lonely man’: Understanding the Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro partnership

I had the pleasure of seeing and reviewing ‘Shutter Island’ (2010) a few weeks ago at a local cinema. Whilst I was amazed at the film’s crisp cinematography and Martin Scorsese’s attempt at the psychological thriller, I was even more taken by Leonardo Di Caprio’s intense portrayal of Teddy Daniels. His performance was a throttling [...]
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DVD: 40th Anniversary Review – Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Il Conformista”

As an avid film fan, I am always thinking about films that capture me, motion pictures that have remained etched in my mind. Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 political-drama ‘Il Conformista’ (1970) captures, in rich cinematography, the alienation of Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant): a man who subscribes to Italy’s Fascist politics and culture by agreeing to kill [...]
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DVD: “State of Play” (Universal)

Film (3.5/5) DVD (3/5) “State of Play” is adapted by plot specialists Tony Gilroy and Matthew Michael Carnahan from the BBC 2003 television series of the same name. To directed the film has been called UK documentarist Kevin Macdonald (“Touching the Void”). The story starts with three murders, a political scandal and a journalistic rivalry [...]
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