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Film Festivals
Podcast: Berlinale 8 - Khodorkovsky Caged Oligarch
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 15 April 2011 19:59
- Written by David D'Arcy
What do you give the billionaire Russian oligarch who has everything? A cage. The Kremlin is locking Mikhail Khodorkovsky up for the next 14 years.
Laste year's Berlinale showed Nenette, Nicholas Philibert's doc about a caged orangutan in a Paris zoo. Calling Kohodorkovsky's prison a zoo would be complimentary, but here's a question -- which has the best food, a French zoo, or a Russian prison?
Cyril Tuschi’s investigative oli-doc doesn’t find much evidence of criminality on the part of Khodorkovsky, who ran Lukos, a huge Russian oil company. Yet it does show you what happens to a rich Russian who decides to get involved in politics. Have you seen any BP executives in a US prison recently? The evidence implicating them is still washing up on the shores of Louisiana.
Podcast: David D'Arcy talks about Nader and Simin
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 10 March 2011 23:14
- Written by David D'Arcy
Nader and Simin – Iran May Not Have WMD, But It Sure has Dysfunctional Families
Iran is no longer in the headlines. But in Berlin, where an Iranian member of the jury who’s now in prison was represented by an empty chair, the Iranian film Nader and Simin: A Separation, by Asghar Farhadi, won the Golden Bear. Acting awards were given to the male and female leads in this drama about a family that tumbles into crisis.
David D’Arcy, back from the Berlinale, talks about Nader and Simin, one of the encouraging signs at the festival.
* click on the player to hear the podcast
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Best of the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 February 2011 17:52
- Written by David D'Arcy
It wasn’t the best Berlinale, but it should have been better. Beginning with opener True Grit, there we
re stars -– Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore and company in Margin Call, the latest financial saga, straight from Sundance Film Festival; and Ralph Fiennes directed himself and a corps of military-clad fighters in Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s most difficult plays to stage, much less to film. (Fiennes and company shot it in Belgrade, Bosnia.)
There was also controversy, and it wasn’t limited to the griping of critics. The Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was set to be on the jury, but he’s been in jail in Iran, where he’s now officially banned from making films. The ban seems a bit superfluous, since Panahi is locked up. The Berlinale kept his name on the jury list, and kept an empty chair to signal his absence.
The Acapulco International Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 17 December 2010 08:11
- Written by Eric Lurio
Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was one world-class resort in Mexico that everyone had heard of -- Acapulco, Mexico.
Back when Grandma was a little girl, when the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable were still in their prime, and John Wayne was still little more than a kid, movie stars would take a four-day cruise from Hollywood to the Mexican state of Guerro, where they would encounter an astoundingly beautiful set of three bays surrounded by rolling hills. Back then Acapulco was the third most famous place in the country, after Mexico City and Tijuana. The rich and famous all wanted to go there and those who wanted to see the rich and famous did too.