Monthly Archive for April, 2010

News – The Auteurs

Published on April 26, 2010 in News. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Auteur theory in film….wait, please don’t go, I won’t bore you with that. I’ll just get straight to it and tell you about a wonderful website which offers free movies, a perfect and natural home for film fans. I stumbled upon this a while back and a commenter also posted a link on an earlier cinematheque post.

The Auteurs is an extensive online movie database where films can be viewed on your home computer or laptop. Admittedly most movies have a charge but there are a number which are possible to view for free and these change regularly. Initial sign up costs nothing, if you want to pay to watch any particular movies after that then that’s up to you.

http://www.theauteurs.com/

What I found amazing when I first stumbled upon this site is the range of films they have. They offer a cocktail of classics, cult, new directors and some absolute rarities I can’t imagine finding elsewhere. Even the most ardent movie fan will find it an education. What does tie their titles together is the name of the site, The Auteurs. Now I’ll bore you.

Auteur is quite simply the French for author. When mentioned alongside film the term relates to a director with a very specific style either visually or thematically. This spans genres and there are noted auteurs like Mario Bava making horror movies alongside Truffaut’s supposedly higher class art house films.

Francois Truffaut - the man who coined the phrase

The term seems overused these days and especially caught the public attention when last year’s Cannes festival was christened the battle of the auteurs with Jacques Audiard and Michael Haneke went head to head for the Palm D’or. The term is certainly no mark of quality, an auteur can employ their recurring aesthetics and themes to produce consistently abysmal or reliably dull pieces. On the other hand Clint Eastwood would never be regarded as one but remains a master filmmaker. Style is not always relevant to spinning a good yarn onscreen. Often though autuers are directors with vision and their works are both unique and creative.

The Auteurs is a site worth checking out to re-explore your favourite classics or discover a new name in the arena of world cinema. Why not start with Antonioni and work your way through to Zebrianus.

Article – Cinema Below the 39th Parallel

Published on April 20, 2010 in Articles. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The phrase ‘golden era’ was originally coined in relation to film as a label for 1930’s Hollywood, a time when anything seemed possible and megalomaniac producers mobilised their harems of stars to appear in some of cinema’s all time classics.

Since then many countries film industries have experienced their own mini eras of success and creativity. Post war Japan was a reflective time for the country and developed true masters such as Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and of course Ozu. The French new wave of the 60’s was a particularly strong period for a consistent producer of quality artistic films, before the baton was returned to the USA in the 1970’s, as the film school generation of Coppola, Scorsese and Lucas stretched their wings. In my book, Hong Kong cinema reached a cultural peak in the 90’s, an opinion I’m happy to bore people with on a daily basis. Yet a different Asian location has been growing in confidence and now has bragging rights as home to some of the most interesting, inventive and shocking cinema of the last decade. That country is South Korea.

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Six of the Best – Moral Panic!

Published on April 12, 2010 in Six of the best. 17 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Let’s peer through the horn rimmed specs of Mary Whitehouse and ‘think of the children!’ as we look at six films which created crises of morality in their day. Please add to the panic with your own suggestions at the bottom.

Our current vision of news may be obscured by a blizzard of mephedrone, but if we can strap on our goggles and look back at headlines from years gone by we’d find that every moment has its panic whether it be sex, drugs or rock and roll (in the best cases all three). What’s permanently a given is that this outrage always links to morality and its seemingly continual disintegration.

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