Month: December 2015

Screening Room: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - Awards, Film - NewLeave a comment
One big whale: 'In the Heart of the Sea' (Warner Bros.)
One big whale: ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ (Warner Bros.)

In 1820, the Nantucket whaling ship Essex met a disastrous fate in the Pacific; only a few men survived. Later, the story that the ship had run afoul of a massive whale became the kernel of Moby-Dick and was more recently dissected in Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea.

In_the_Heart_of_the_Sea_--_book_coverRon Howard’s 3D adaptation of Philbrick’s book is opening this week, and hoping very much for some Oscar attention. My review is at Film Journal International:

…It starts in 1850 with a spry young Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw) trying to claw a story out of Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), a drunk old salt who has refused for 30 years to talk about his connection with the Essex whaling-boat disaster. Melville’s money and Nickerson’s exasperated wife finally crack open that whiskey-sodden shell. But only after Nickerson fixes Melville with a probing look. “Have you read Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. Melville?” He asks. “Great writer”…

The trailer is here:

New York Film Critics Online: Best Picture of 2015 is ‘Spotlight’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - AwardsLeave a comment
Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy James, Michael Keaton, and John Slattery in 'Spotlight' (Open Road Films)
Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d’Arcy James, Michael Keaton, and John Slattery in ‘Spotlight’ (Open Road Films)

New York Film Critics Online, which generously includes yours truly among its membership, voted today on our best films of 2015. Unlike some years, when the opinion coalesces around two or three different films, this time only one film garnered multiple awards. That would be Tom McCarthy’s incredible eye-opener Spotlight, about the Boston Globe reporters who uncovered the Catholic Church’s decades-long coverup of widespread abuse by Boston priests. It won in four categories, including best picture.

Herewith the full list:

  • PICTURE: Spotlight 
  • DIRECTOR: Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
  • SCREENPLAY: Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer, Spotlight
  • ACTRESS: Brie Larson, Room
  • ACTOR: Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
  • SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rooney Mara, Carol
  • SUPPORTING ACTOR: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
  • CINEMATOGRAPHY: John Seale, Mad Max: Fury Road
  • FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE: Son of Saul
  • DOCUMENTARY: Amy
  • ANIMATED FEATURE: Inside Out
  • ENSEMBLE CAST: Spotlight
  • DEBUT AS DIRECTOR: Alex Garland, Ex Machina
  • USE OF MUSIC: Love & Mercy; Atticus Ross, Composer; Featuring the Music of Brian Wilson
  • BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE: Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina, The Danish Girl

And here is our list of the year’s 10 best films, in alphabetical order (yes, that’s right, one of them is Mad Max, as it should be):

  • 45 Years 
  • The Big Short 
  • Bridge of Spies
  • Brooklyn 
  • Carol
  • Mad Max: Fury Road 
  • Sicario
  • Spotlight 
  • Steve Jobs 
  • Trumbo

Writer’s Desk: Stop Complaining

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

makegoodartNeil Gaiman has no patience for the term “writer’s block.” To him, it smells like a cop-out. Also, according to him, it just doesn’t help:

If you turn around and go, ‘I am blocked,’ this is just something writers say because we’re really clever. It sounds like it has nothing to do with you: ‘I would love to write today, but I am blocked. The gods have done it to me,’ And it’s not true. Cellists don’t have cellist block. Gardeners don’t have gardener’s block. TV hosts do not have have TV host block. But writers have claimed all the blocks, and we think it’s a real thing.

So next time you’re stuck, avoid the term completely. Go for a walk, have another cup of coffee, play with the cats, and then get back to it.

Listen to Neil. He’s written a few things. Many, quite good.

Weekend Reading: December 4, 2015

On By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

reading1

Screening Room: ‘Macbeth’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - NewLeave a comment
"Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air" (Weinstein Company)
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air” (Weinstein Company)

It’s been awhile since anybody has dared make a film of the Scottish Play. Maybe the curse is finally over? In any case, you could do much worse than Michael Fassbender as the ambitious Thane and Marion Cotillard as the scheming Lady Macbeth.

macbeth1A new and very atmospheric Macbeth opens this week. My review is at Film Journal International:

Soaked in foggy Highland gloom, Justin Kurzel’s beautifully dour Macbeth is moody and violent to a fault. Nobody cracks a smile and there’s nary a drop of blood spilled that isn’t captured in slow-motion flight like an outtake from some Ridley Scott medieval sword-fest. That’s all on the page, of course. Nobody would say that the Scottish Play had to be done as comedy. But there’s a reason that some adaptations embed a bitter strain of farce amidst all the plotting, haunting, murder and madness. After all, its protagonists spend a good part of the play completely out of their heads and throwing an entire nation into civil war because of what some witches told them. While their delusions have real-life consequences, to take them entirely seriously is to risk missing at least part of the point…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’

On By chrisbarsantiIn DVD - FilmLeave a comment

holygrail1Back in 1975, Monty Python was just starting to get a name for themselves outside of the UK. That was the year their first proper film landed in theaters, and comedy just wasn’t the same after that. Killer rabbits and all.

My review of the 40th anniversary DVD / Blu-ray release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is at PopMatters:

Shot by a ramshackle Dadaist comedy troupe over a chaotic and fairly drunken month in Scotland in 1974, right around the time that their Flying Circus TV show was coming to an end, and funded primarily by having some rock star friends of the troupe (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin) throw in a few thousand pounds each, the film should have been one of those debacles where everybody wishes they had just packed it up and retired instead. Among the extras on the anniversary edition—including outtakes and some newly unearthed animations by Terry Gilliam—is an on-the-set BBC piece where Gilliam seems more chuckle-headed college joker than co-director, John Cleese barely able to contain his irritation with being directed and all the last-minute rewrites, and set mechanics so primitive they could be out-done by an early Doctor Who episode…

Here’s the original trailer: