[NOTE: We’re kicking off our daily Cannes preview series later today — stay tuned.] We knew months ago that Robert De Niro was presiding over this year’s Cannes jury, but the eight people joining him on the bench were finally named yesterday. Red-carpet stargazers should be pretty happy with this year’s crop: joining De Niro […]
Cannes jury includes Law, Thurman, Assayas
Posted by Guy Lodge · 6:54 am · April 20th, 2011
Filed in: Daily
The Great Performances: 2004
Posted by John Foote · 6:35 pm · December 11th, 2009
In Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti gave the best performance by an actor in 2004, so said the New York Film Critics Circle, and how right they were. So why, why, why was the actor denied an Oscar nomination? Granted, it was a strong year, but his work was at the top of that heap […]
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The Great Performances: 2003
Posted by John Foote · 9:14 am · December 4th, 2009
There is little doubt in my mind I am going to take some heat this week, so let’s kick it off right away with my belief that Sean Penn deserved his Best Actor Oscar for “Mystic River,” a performance of overwhelming ferocity and staggering emotional power. Yes, I too loved Bill Murray in “Lost in […]
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THE LISTS: Top 10 Tarantino characters
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 12:31 pm · August 18th, 2009
It’s been over a month since we cranked out an installment of The Lists, but with Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” set for release on Friday, it seemed a good time to cook up a new collective. When most people praise Tarantino’s skill as a screenwriter, they tend to focus on his well-honed ear for dialogue. […]
Filed in: The Lists
Still got it
Posted by Guy Lodge · 10:26 am · June 15th, 2009
Sorry if there’s been a lot of star-gazing on the site lately, but while I was queuing in the supermarket this morning, I was struck by these magazine covers sitting appropriately side-by-side on a display rack. It’s interesting and heartening to see major face space given to two actresses on the wrong side of the […]
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Acting out
Posted by Guy Lodge · 8:48 am · May 6th, 2009
The Guardian’s Ryan Gilbey offers an interesting piece today about screen acting, and the narrow criteria by which many of us judge it. He is writing principally in response to a recently released British film, “Helen,” a rigidly stylised meta-film in which actors play actors participating in a police reconstruction, which has attracted divisive reviews […]
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Sigourney Weaver + who in ‘Alien 5?’
Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 1:28 pm · July 7th, 2008
Meredith Woerner at io9 is wondering this week whether sci-fi/action writers will finally bone up and produce a sidekick to our modern cinema heroes and heroines worth the price of a ticket. She’s rightly spotlighting recent examples in “Live Free or Die Hard” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” as reason […]
Filed in: Daily