Classroom dramas are a venerable subgenre, populated by troubled students, charismatic and dedicated teachers, lots of entertaining dramatic contrivance, comic relief and heavy-duty sentiment. Often, there is a pop music soundtrack and we are usually treated to a big finish of some sort. “The Class,” which won the Palm D’or at Cannes in 2008 and was France’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar last year, has the troubled students and the hardworking teacher, but its approach is a million miles from any tale of educational triumph and tragedy you’ve ever seen.

Drawn from an autobiographical novel by punk rock singer turned highly successful writer François Bégaudeau, “The Class” is in a subgenre all its own: an educational procedural. Like many a good police procedural, the events are entirely on the job and the film takes a hard-edged, facts-only approach. Directed with a disciplined, unyielding eye-level view by Laurent Cantet (“Time Out”), we learn little of the students’ home life, except by way of rumor, and the only personal detail we learn about the teacher is that he admits to being heterosexual. And, while this in an urban, multi-ethnic school in today’s Paris, we’re a long way from some of the overcrowded human dumping grounds that sometimes pass for American inner-city schools. This is a good, if flawed, educational environment with mostly well intentioned and hardworking teachers and students. We get the impression everyone is both trying to make the best of things and simply get through the day and the school year. The tension is so great that the film often feels like one of those work-related dreams from which you wake up tired.

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[Today’s entry at Premium Hollywood had some FtY suitable material, so here it is again.]

Filthy lucre is today’s theme in movieland. Really, it’s every day’s theme, but it’s on my mind today.

* Nikki Finke, who actually makes money blogging, notes a pay cut for William Morris assistants, who already work ridiculously hard for the hope of decent money some day, and are expected to work a minimum of fifty hours a week. Presumably they get some overtime (though one wonders if they’re not working actually quite a bit more — Hollywood and Walmart have been known to have a few things in common in the past). They’d better because their boss’s brother is the White House chief of staff. Could get messy, otherwise.

Finke also has an interesting — inasmuch as I can follow it — look at some silver linings amidst the major studio’s fiscals clouds.

* A noted casting change in the third “Twilight” will probably not affect grosses perceptibly, but there’s no stopping those wagging tongues.

* And with all the fuss at Comic-Con, the appearance of anime genius Hiyao Miyazaki got all but ignored by the media, as far as I can tell. “Princess Mononoke” beat “Titanic” in Japan. If it had done so here, it’s fair to say he wouldn’t have been a relative afterthought.

* What of “District 9″? Given one of a few strong early reviews by Justin Chang, will politically trenchant, if thoughtfully violent/icky, Sci-Fi set in South Africa find a big enough American audience? (H/t Jeffrey Wells.)

* For those of you who live outside of California, it might be interesting to note that while mass chaos seems far away here, the state’s fiscal crisis really is effecting everything and everyone to varying degrees. People I know who work in the public sector out are personally experiencing furloughs and pay cuts to go with them, classroom sizes are ballooning absurdly and on it goes to some pretty scary and sad places.

It may not be directly related, but the Los Angeles Times report that the L.A. County Museum of Art is ending its weekend programming hits me where I live. As Anne Thompson points out, some of that may be due to some very canny competition from the terrific Los Angeles Cinematheque, a relatively very young organization that has actually come to the fore during the DVD era with two theaters at opposite ends of town offering some pretty great programming.

The Times‘ John Horn strikes a perhaps overly drastic or even borderline intellectually snobbish note on that point, though it’s true that this is not a golden age for art movies. LACMA was more prone than any other venue to offer works by such cinephile-only filmmakers as Bela Tarr, whose best known movie is the 7.5 hour “Satantango,” and will be closing out with the far-from-Frank Capra Alain Resnais.

Nevertheless, the museum’s Bing Theater was certainly not above offering crowd-pleasing fare from time to time and, indeed, not doing so would be to ignore a huge part of film history. Still, a cannier mix might not have hurt so much. Since they are talking of tie-ins with museum shows, programs similar to (or identical to) New York’s MOMA collaboration with Tim Burton might be in order. If regular film programming ever does return to MOCA, a little more Charlie Chaplin and a little less Maoist-period Godard might not be the end of the world, either.

Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 landmark is in many respects the ultimate “arty foreign flick.” Credited with launching the mid-century foreign film craze on college campuses and boho communities around the U.S., Sweden’s “The Seventh Seal” is frequently listed alongside “Citizen Kane,” “The Seven Samurai” and “The Rules of the Game” as one of the top four or five greatest works of film art. It’s also a serious contender for the most parodied film of all time, having been sent up in innumerable places and contexts including Woody Allen’s “Love & Death,” “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” and the “Cheating Death” segment of “The Colbert Report.” The downside of its huge artistic rep is that probably no other single film has had to deal with as much of an “eat your vegetables” reputation, so that even some cinephiles approach watching it more as a duty than a pleasure – even though many other art house faves are actually far more unapproachable. It’s gotten to the point where even many serious film fanatics downplay it, avoid it completely, or achieve a kind of super film snob nirvana by looking down their noses at it.

They get away with that last part because of something you’ll never know about “The Seventh Seal” until you actually see it: as death-obsessed, arty foreign flicks go, it’s actually kind of fun. There’s no getting around the portentous stylistic flourishes or the deep dish subject matter – nothing less than the meaning of life and death – but Bergman’s signature film also has its share of risqué knockabout humor, as well as a bit of horror, violence, more than a little melodrama, and some of the most stark black and white imagery ever committed to film. It’s important to realize, though, that this might not actually be Bergman’s best film. Heck, as with any movie, it’s possible you’ll hate it. You have my permission.

The setting is medieval Europe at the time of the devastating Black Plague. Knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), who has recently returned from the pointlessly bloody crusades, is confronted by the hooded figure of Death (Bengt Ekerot). It should be curtains, but the warrior insists that, while his body might be afraid, he himself is not. He nevertheless challenges the specter to the most famous board game in movie history — a single game of chess, which he has correctly surmised is Mr. Personified Death’s weakness. The delaying tactic works for the length of the film, as the knight and his cynical squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) have a series of encounters, all variously dealing with the subject of life and its inevitable end, as plague-borne hysteria sweeps the land and threatens Jof, a likable actor (Nils Poppe), Mia, his loving wife (Bibi Andersson), and their infant son.

READ THE REST AT BULLZ-EYE.COM

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Up to now, I’ve been a no-show at the several cinephile exams that have been hosted over the last couple of years at Dennis Cozzalio’s legendarily brainy film geek blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Well, before splitting for a hard-earned vacation, Dennis has posted a new exam on film-related matters, up in honor of the cartoon dog genius, Prof. Peabody, which you’re all encouraged to take.

I’ve posted my responses in the comment thread over there already, but now that I’m a SLIFR slacker no more, I thought I’d make ‘em do double duty here because we know that my opinions matter, or something.

Here goes….

1) Favorite Biopic

“Lawrence of Arabia” – an obviously great film and a rather pedestrian choice given that I really like biopics, sometimes the cheesier and and more ridiculously fabricated the better. Therefore, quasi-demi-honorable mention is alluded this triumvirate of absurdly wrong biopics – “The Jolson Story” (it’s amazing how much Al Jolson’s life was just like the plot of “The Jazz Singer”!), “They Died With Their Boots On” (the love affair between Custer and the Indians your socialist history teacher doesn’t want you to see!) and “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” (he didn’t just appear in action movies…he lived them!).

2) Dyan Cannon or Tuesday Weld?

It’s close, but I give it to Dyan Cannon for being hilarious onscreen and genuinely wacky offscreen.

3) Best example of science fiction futurism rendered silly by the event of time catching up to the prediction

The Jetson’s treadmill? I’m drawing a blank here.

4) Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon or Troy Donahue & Sandra Dee?

Frankie & Annette – I grew up watching those movies on channels 5 & 9 (I think) out here up to age 10 or so. Not that those movies are in any sense “good” (I wonder if I could sit through any of them now?), but F&A at least have a certain amount of charm and sense of humor, which I really can’t say about Troy Donahue, at least.

5) Favorite Raoul Walsh movie?

Not really “White Heat,” and no, definitely not “They Died with Their Boots On”… The winner is “The Roaring Twenties” – by far. Just a magnificent entertainment. I need to see that one again some time soon.

6) Sophomore film which represents greatest improvement over the director’s debut

This is tough, but I guess I’m going to say Polanski’s “Repulsion” as it’s brilliant and “Knife in the Water” left me feeling merely 90 minutes older after it was done. Though, that was in college and I might have a very different reaction now. (Another possibility is “Rushmore” – though I loved “Bottle Rocket” quite a bit, so it’s dicey.)

7) Ice Cube or Mos Def?

Mos Def – because he convinced me he was actually English in “Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Favorite movie about the music industry.

Many, many fun movies in this category, but I guess I’m going to have to go with “Nashville.”

(more…)

Audrey Hepburn’s status as a princess for adult fairytales got its second workout in this very popular comedy from Hollywood’s master of cheerful cynicism and heartbroken romanticism, Billy Wilder. Remade profitably in 1994 by Sydney Pollack, this is a potentially great romantic comedy from a time when such films were often good, that nevertheless falls short because of a single piece of unfortunate casting – but more about that after the obligatory plot synopsis.

Based on Samuel Taylor’s Broadway hit, Sabrina Fair, the film version brings us Hepburn as Sabrina Fairchild, the once-gawky daughter of a chauffeur (John Williams) working on the estate of a super-wealthy industrialist (Walter Hampden). The two sons seem bent on portraying a human version of Aesop’s tale of the Grasshopper and the Ant. The all-work/no play ant would be the curmudgeonly Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart), while the all-play/no work grasshopper would be the significantly younger, but often married, David Larrabee (William Holden). Sabrina, naturally, falls head-over-heels for the handsome and carefree grasshopper, but he is too busy courting other insects to pay attention to a gawky teenager, even if she is Audrey Hepburn. That changes when Sabrina returns from an extended trip to Paris where she has learned cooking, “the ways of the world,” and the wisdom of wearing dresses designed by Hubert de Givenchy. This time, David quickly takes notice of the beautiful ex-ingénue – threatening both his impending next marriage to an attractive heiress (Martha Hyer), and the multi-million dollar business deal that goes with it. The presumably cold-blooded Linus will do anything to make sure the deal goes through, including using himself as romantic bait…..

Read the rest at Bullz-Eye.com

Via Greencine some sad news –  Guillaume Depardieu, the 37 year-old son of Gérard Depardieu, a fine and very busy and highly acclaimed actor in his own right, has died, reportedly from pneumonia. As reported in the Guardian, He’d been suffering from a number of severe health problems in the wake of a 2003 motorcycle accident including an infection that forced the amputation of one of his legs.

I’ve only seen the younger Depardieu in one film — a frighteningly strong performance in Leos Carax’s very strange and compelling, Pola X –  a film that is much too good to have been known mainly because of a hardcore sex scene featuring Depardieu and a body double — but he made a definite impression. A shame.

Okay, so good ol’ Brian Doan tagged me in the viral “12 Films” meme more than a week or so back. The idea of this meme, which thanks to Dennis Cozzalio (who reminded me of a couple of films I want to add to my own list) has morphed from naming twelve films that you’d love to see, but are virtually impossible to find, to twelve films one simply hasn’t gotten around to.  In a way, that makes it even more intimidating seeing as I have some 300+ films films in my Netflix queue and another twenty or so films sitting on a couple of DVRs where I live. So, I’m going to kind of split the difference and kind of favor films that are at least somewhat tricky to see — with a few where my only excuse is filmic fecklessness.

The first is on loan from Dennis, but I come by it honestly….

1. Ulzana’s Raid –  This ultra-tough western from Robert Aldrich has the “virtue” of actually being almost impossible to find either in revival or, even more so, on DVD, it’s a movie I’ve vaguely wanted to see since I first took up a special interest in westerns some fifteen or more years back. That interest became greatly intensified, however, when Joss Whedon cited it repeatedly as a major influence (along with Michael Shaara’s novel, The Killer Angels) on his great, short-lived TV horse opera/space opera series Firefly, which I liked with a level of enthusiasm so strong that I can hear certain friends sighing even as they read this.  In any case, Robert Aldrich’s film is said to be of one of the very few action westerns to really attempt to deal honestly with the Indian wars following the Civil War. As much as I dearly love John Ford’s tales of sacrifice and frontier chivalry, Fort Apache and Rio Grande, I clearly need — I actually want — to be cinematically disillusioned about those vicious times.

2. Captain Kronos — Vampire Hunter. I’ve wanted to see this Hammer film since about age 15. Why? A vampire fighting swashbuckler written and directed by Brian Clemens of The Avengers. I mean, vampires, swordfights, presumably witty dialogue. I mean, seriously, what else do you need to know?

3. Chimes at Midnight. I actually blew numerous opportunities to see this one  at the Nuart and the long-gone Fox Venice as a kid. That was because I hadn’t yet read Shakespeare’s history plays featuring Prince Hal and Falstaff — which probably remain my favorite works by the by Bard. Putting together the Falstaff sections of the four plays featuring the iconic and beloved character appears in, this film is frequently talked about as perhaps Welles’ second great film after Citizen Kane. I am not a part of the giant-sized Welles cinephile cult when it comes to his later output, with something of an exception for Touch of Evil (I’m currently working on a review of the new DVD for this, btw) but I’ll basically watch any Welles film once – and with Welles, a great ham, playing one of my favorite ham characters, I can’t see not loving this one at least a little bit. According to Wikipedia because of legal difficulties this one remains viewable only as a DVD import from Brazil. Another reason to say that first, we really should kill all the lawyers. (Well, not the nice ones. You know who you are.)

4. Bunny Lake is Missing. I definitely love a mystery and this one just looks cool. I also think I was freaked out as a toddler by a scene involving…something…a baby doll? I have no clue, so that’s another mystery. So why has it been on my DVR for six months? (BTW — That’s my kind of movie poster — who says you have to see the actors?)

5. The President’s Analyst. Another DVR sitter that I’ve only seen a moment or two, here or there. I love political thrillers; I love spy films — I love them even more when you add in a little black comedy, or a whole lot. And throw in some late sixties pinache/weirdness, the fact that it’s written by a great TV comedy writer named Theodore J. Flicker (was that his real name?), and you’ve got a psychedelic martini I can’t wait to sip. But, yet, I do.

6. Kagemusha: The  Shadow Warrior. I went to see this lesser known, but highly regarded, late period Kurosawa samurai tale (actually kind of a spy film, when you think of it), right after finals in college with two buddies. I think I was nodding off within a quarter of an hour and woke up just in time to be baffled by some kind of ironic (?) conclusion. I missed seeing a new print of it a week ago today. Damn. It looks good.

Unfortunately, Jean-Luc Godard’s Week End is a mere runner-up and will not be among the films discussed starting Monday and on through the next ten days at the Britannica Blog by writer Raymond Benson, who’ll be taking us through his ten favorite films from the epic year. Benson is best known as a successful writer of thrillers, including being the author of a passel of officially sanctioned post-Fleming James Bond novels, and the person who guesses his #1 film from 1968 gets a free signed copy of his appropriately titled rock and roll thriller, A Hard Day’s Death. [Update: As Brian Doan reminded me in comments just now, Mr. Benson is even better known as the author of the hightly acclaimed reference, The James Bond Bedside Companion. Oops.]

Anyhow, your esteemed proprietor has been asked to participate by way of comments on a daily basis as Mr. Benson reveals his choices. I’ll be just part of a whole gang of, no doubt, painstakingly selected folk, including two friends of this here blog: David Hudson of the completely essential and utterly invaluble Greencine blog (syndicated over on the right of your screen), and the ever-amusing wordsmith, Alan Lopuszynski of Burbanked, one of the first movies bloggers to comment here and link to me. Also on board is sixties/seventies-specialist Kimberly Lindbergs of the rightfully acclaimed Cinebeats blog (which I really need to start reading a lot more often and probably should add to the blog roll if I haven’t already), Ray “Flickhead” Young, autodidact Steven Carlson and many other fine folk — including one guy actually associated with a print venue who has perhaps even met Jonathan Rosenbaum. (Other film bloggers are also invited to jump in.)

So, head over to Raymond Benson’s first post right now and take a look at his runners-up list, and start the speculation. Then return with me next week and see what we think.

Until then, use your time wisely. Prepare.

There’s a truism that while many movies have writers as main characters, no film can really show the process of writing. Indeed, the two main characters in this clever, moving, sincere and extremely well-made and very meta literary coming-of-age tale from Norway seem to spend relatively little time at their PCs. Still, director Joachim Trier does as good a job as any film I can think of when it comes to exploring the interactive properties of creativity, friendship, psychology and testosterone.

“Reprise,” co-written with Joachim Trier’s real-life writer friend, Eskil Vogt, starts out with two young, slightly spoiled, aspiring high-grade literary authors and best friends contemplating a mailbox. A narrator tells us that if both manuscripts had been accepted at the same time, certain events would have happened. However, what happens in this particular story is that only the manuscript of the quieter and, it turns out, more psychologically fragile, Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) is accepted, while the more stable and gregarious Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) is sent back to the drawing board.

Read the rest at Bullz-Eye.com

Without a doubt, the strangest thing about this lavish, six-year-old international cult hit, an eccentric blend of Hammer-style period horror and chop socky à la Française, is that it’s — yes — “inspired by true events.” Really.

As “Brotherhood” gets under way, it’s the late 1760s and Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), an emotionally scarred ex-soldier and macho-man action-guy naturalist, and his faithful Iroquois companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos), a cross between John Redcorn of “King of the Hill” and Bruce Lee, arrive from the court of King Louis in the redneck mountain province of Gevaudan to track down a mysterious beast who has been slaughtering local peasants. While a young nobleman hep to the ways of the Enlightenment (Jérémie Renier) assists Fronsac, most of the locals are far less accommodating. Most notably, there is Jean-François de Morangias (Vincent Cassel), a one-armed young count whom, among other psychological issues, is somewhat overly protective of his gorgeous younger sister, Marianne (Émilie Dequenne). Naturally, Fronsac has instantly fallen for the beauteous, virtuous redhead, but since “Brotherhood” is French and not American, that doesn’t prevent him from keeping sexy company with Sylvia (Monica Belluci), a brilliant and bounteous super-prostie with an agenda of her own.

Find out whether or not I liked it at Bullz-Eye.com