In Contention

Tag: Distant

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’

    The director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

    The talent: By this point in his career, auteur-photographer Ceylan is a self-standing arthouse brand — which is just as well, since the other names involved are unlikely to ring many bells with non-Turkish viewers. Leading man Yilmaz Erdoğan, a 43 year-old actor-writer-director, is a hugely popular figure in his home country, but his domestic hits haven’t crossed over. IMDb claims Ceylan wrote the film with his wife Ebru, as was the case with 2008’s “Three Monkeys”; other sources give him sole script credit. Cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki, who shot Ceylan’s last two features, returns — arguably the more important concern, given the director’s reputation as a visual stylist.

    The pitch: Details on this one are closely guarded — even the usually long-winded Thierry Frémaux had nothing to add about the film at the Competition press conference. This much I have gleaned: Ceylan’s most expansive production yet, the 150-minute film covers a night in the lives of a doctor and a prosecutor on the harsh terrain of the Anatolia steppe. (Suffice to say the title’s promise of a Turkish spaghetti western is unlikely to be fulfilled.)

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  • The Telegraph picks the decade’s Top 100

    Fahrenheit 9/11I’ve lately been immersed in a marathon of DVD viewing and re-viewings, catching up on films that slipped through the cracks and reassessing former favorites — all in preparation for my own year-end “Best of the 2000s” list.

    It’s a process that has resulted in some unexpected fringe challengers (“Longing,” an underexposed work of New German Cinema, won’t leave me alone), as well as some shifted perspectives (Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Distant,” which I adored on first viewing six years ago, burned a little less brightly second time around). Nat Rogers is currently doing similar homework at the Film Experience, on a year-by-year basis.

    At this stage, I have only a faint idea of what my list will eventually look like, but I’m already fairly sure that it will have little in common with the Top 100 of the decade that has just been unveiled at The Telegraph. Compiled by the British paper’s three critics, including IC friend Tim Robey, it’s an interesting and occasionally perplexing list.

    They state upfront that their aim is to represent the decade’s “pick ‘n mix” culture, though the headline promises the decade’s “Top 100 movie masterpieces.” “Mamma Mia!” and “Saw,” both in the top 20, may fit the former description, but “masterpieces” they ain’t. Then again, popularity or influence aren’t the principal criteria either, as the list includes such obscurities as “Los Angeles Plays Itself.”

    Whatever the system of selection, the result, you may or may not be thrilled to hear, is that Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is the film of the 2000s.

    (More, including the Telegraph’s Top 20 films, after the cut.)

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