Mighty Movie Podcast: Michael Madsen on Into Eternity

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 03 February 2011 19:37

Written by Daniel Persons

It is truly the gift that keeps on giving: The stockpile of nuclear waste that we continue to generate, year in and year out, useless for any practical purpose, but still deadly. In Finland, they think they’ve come up with a solution — it’s called Onkalo (literally Finnish for “hiding place”), a massive, man-made cave meant to store 250,000 tons of radioactive refuse for 100,000 years. The two-fold problem: In a world where the pyramids are only 4500 years old, and the oldest cave drawings date back to only 30,000 years, how can anyone be sure that this dangerous stockpile will remain secure over 100 millenia, and how can we prevent future generations — by either accident or design — from gaining access to the cache?

Conceptual artist Michael Madsen attempts to confront the dilemma in Into Eternity, a mesmerizing, thoughtful documentary that takes audiences down into the still-in-progress Onkalo dig and introduces us to the people responsible for its construction and maintenance. Framed as cautionary fable for future generations, the film attempts to conceptualize the notion of a danger that persists into posterity, and to explore the challenges in dealing with such a legacy.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Michael Madsen.

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Spain's Javier Bardem Is Looking Biutiful and Award-Worthy

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 01 February 2011 18:41

Written by Brad Balfour

Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu is a very demanding filmmaker and takes a long time to make a movie. Thankfully he has found a very compliant actor in Academy Award winner Javier Bardem -- one who effectively immersed himself in the character of Uxbal and sustained him while working nearly half a year to finish this controversial movie, Biutiful.

Middleman Uxbal is a tragic character, a father of two with a bipolar ex-wife, who straddles the line between villain and good-guy; he conceals that he is terminally ill with cancer while trying to cope with his impending conclusion. He struggles with a tainted life, a fate that works against him in an effort to both forgive and be forgiven.

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Legendary Oscar-Winner Bernardo Bertolucci's Career Celebrated at MoMA

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 01 February 2011 17:56

Written by Brad Balfour

If there was any director that deserved a retrospective it is Italy's Bernardo Bertolucci. And if any film in his canon should be celebrated it should be The Conformist. His 1970 film tackled big questions in deeply personal ways and did with a range of deep emotions. But then he deserves the attention as well for his gorgeous The Last Emperor, his epic 1900 and his spiritually enlightening Little Buddha.

At 21, Bertolucci debuted his first film, The Grim Reaper, at 1962's Venice Film Festival. Since then, the now 70-year-old auteur has earned nearly every award or accolade a filmmaker aspires to. While he has experimented with form and content, he consistently has enjoyed mainstream audiences worldwide. By viewing this career-spanning series one can appreciate this balance he has struck.

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