You’re no messiah. You’re a movie of the week. You’re a fucking t-shirt, at best…
The Artist maintains awards momentum
23 JanOn the eve of the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominations, The Artist has muscled its way into a seemingly unassailable position as the firm favourite for Academy glory.
Adding to its clutch of Golden Globes and success at the London Film Critics’ Circle awards, The Artist landed the portentous Producers Guild award, an accolade that has been afforded to the past four Best Picture winner at the Oscars. It then swiftly added to its burgeoning trophy cabinet by snaffling the UK Regional Critics’ Film of the year award.
THE LOWDOWN WEEK 2
23 JanIn the midst of awards season, there invariably emerge a few gong hungry stinkers that spoil the party. This week perhaps sees the most flagrant of this year’s bunch with the release of Clint Eastwood’s J.Edgar, a biopic of the FBI’s “is he gay or isn’t he” founding father J.Edgar Hoover. We’re also treated, in the loosest sense of the word, to Madonna’s second directorial feature, W.E., Steven Soderbergh’s kick ass pic Haywire which can only be an improvement on the woeful Contagion which he inflicted upon us with last year and Ralph Fiennes’ take on Shakespeare’s epic tragedy Coriolanus.
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
22 Jan
It’s hard to start a revolution. Even harder to continue it. And hardest of all to win it…
London Film Critics’ Circle awards nail it: Almost
20 JanThe Artist cemented itself as the Oscar frontrunner at last night’s London Critics’ Circle awards, picking up prizes for film of the year, best director for Michael Hazanavicus and best actor for Jean Dujardin.
It continues the run of awards success that the silent film has enjoyed in recent weeks, having scooped three Golden Globes last weekend. Its only apparent competition for Academy glory, the Alexander Payne film The Descendants, which also scored three globes, drew a telling blank.
Girl Model (2012)
19 JanWorking for the Skin-Deep Trade
The dichotomous nature of the modelling industry is brutally exposed by documentarian duo David Redmon and Ashley Sabin in this stark expose of the realities of the business. It’s a bleak and damning indictment of a trade that shatters any glamorous or aspirational illusions that may have still surrounded it, instead revealing it to be as sordid as many might have suspected.
Redmon and Sabin’s focus rests on the unsettling underbelly of the market that exists between Russia and Japan. A casting call in deepest Siberia has incredibly young girls in their hundreds lined up and ushered around like livestock to be inspected, photographed and approved for effective export to the apparently lucrative Japanese market, which has very specific requirements for very fresh faces.
crash/burn 