by Cláudio Alves
It was on July 17th, 1994, when a most foul thing happened. In Lisbon, a baby was born destined to become an insufferable cinephile full of opinions and costume design trivia swilling around in his chronically depressed mind. That unfortunate creature was me, and today I celebrate my 28th birthday. Inspired by Nathaniel and Tim Brayton, I decided to mark the occasion with a special list that fully displays my movie passions. With a film for each year, this collection comprises titles that mean something to me, for one reason or another. Of course, they're not these years' best cinematic achievements, nor are they my outright favorites. However, I have a special place in my heart, in my memories, for them all. So come explore my life through a personal film odyssey and maybe get to know me better…...
It was on July 17th, 1994, when a most foul thing happened. In Lisbon, a baby was born destined to become an insufferable cinephile full of opinions and costume design trivia swilling around in his chronically depressed mind. That unfortunate creature was me, and today I celebrate my 28th birthday. Inspired by Nathaniel and Tim Brayton, I decided to mark the occasion with a special list that fully displays my movie passions. With a film for each year, this collection comprises titles that mean something to me, for one reason or another. Of course, they're not these years' best cinematic achievements, nor are they my outright favorites. However, I have a special place in my heart, in my memories, for them all. So come explore my life through a personal film odyssey and maybe get to know me better…...
- 7/17/2022
- by Cláudio Alves
- FilmExperience
Our Oscar Volleys series is down to our last two categories. Here are Tim Brayton and Eric Blume to talk Best Director. (This volley was recorded before the BAFTA announcement but since those nominations are juried they probably won't have much bearing on Oscar outcomes.)
Eric Blume: Tim, I'm thrilled to talk shop about the Best Director category. Let's start with Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, and Kenneth Branagh who all seem unlikely to miss. I'm personally thrilled that Campion might ride her crest all the way to a win. Nobody else could have made The Power of the Dog work so layered and subtle, or told that story without it seeming heavy-handed, obvious, or silly. The film gives Campion the chance to do her specialty: embroiling us in a narrative and in character motivations so intensely strange yet fully human that we're transported by our own confusion and curiosity. She...
Eric Blume: Tim, I'm thrilled to talk shop about the Best Director category. Let's start with Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, and Kenneth Branagh who all seem unlikely to miss. I'm personally thrilled that Campion might ride her crest all the way to a win. Nobody else could have made The Power of the Dog work so layered and subtle, or told that story without it seeming heavy-handed, obvious, or silly. The film gives Campion the chance to do her specialty: embroiling us in a narrative and in character motivations so intensely strange yet fully human that we're transported by our own confusion and curiosity. She...
- 2/3/2022
- by EricB
- FilmExperience
By: Tim Brayton and Chris James
Frontrunners "Belfast" and "The Power of the Dog" will also likely duke it out in Best Film Editing.
Welcome to our Oscar Volley series at The Film Experience. Each day, member of Team Experience will have a conversation about one or two of the Oscar categories. Today, Tim and Chris tackle the Best Film Editing race. This race has long been a predictor for Best Picture. In the past fifty years, only Birdman (2014), which was famously designed to look like it had no editing at all, and Ordinary People (1980) were able to win Best Picture without a nomination in this category. Will the branch have a few tricks up its sleeve or just got with the five hottest Best Picture contenders...
Frontrunners "Belfast" and "The Power of the Dog" will also likely duke it out in Best Film Editing.
Welcome to our Oscar Volley series at The Film Experience. Each day, member of Team Experience will have a conversation about one or two of the Oscar categories. Today, Tim and Chris tackle the Best Film Editing race. This race has long been a predictor for Best Picture. In the past fifty years, only Birdman (2014), which was famously designed to look like it had no editing at all, and Ordinary People (1980) were able to win Best Picture without a nomination in this category. Will the branch have a few tricks up its sleeve or just got with the five hottest Best Picture contenders...
- 1/28/2022
- by Christopher James
- FilmExperience
by Tim Brayton
When we think of the most memorable moments in Oscar history, we tend to think about winners and their speeches, or maybe particularly impressive (or disastrous) musical or comedy performances during the ceremony itself. We don't, as a rule, tend to think about how the categories get introduced, but I find myself in the position this year of thinking that the very best, or at least the most gratifying moment in Sunday night’s telecast was exactly that. I'm talking about Harrison Ford introducing Best Editing, where we got one of those vanishingly rare moments throughout the years where this annual event designed to promote and celebrate filmmaking actually managed to promote and celebrate filmmaking.
If you've forgotten the moment, it was as unflashy as it gets: Ford, in an apparent state of, ahem "advanced relaxation," read a bunch of bullet points off of a sheet of paper.
When we think of the most memorable moments in Oscar history, we tend to think about winners and their speeches, or maybe particularly impressive (or disastrous) musical or comedy performances during the ceremony itself. We don't, as a rule, tend to think about how the categories get introduced, but I find myself in the position this year of thinking that the very best, or at least the most gratifying moment in Sunday night’s telecast was exactly that. I'm talking about Harrison Ford introducing Best Editing, where we got one of those vanishingly rare moments throughout the years where this annual event designed to promote and celebrate filmmaking actually managed to promote and celebrate filmmaking.
If you've forgotten the moment, it was as unflashy as it gets: Ford, in an apparent state of, ahem "advanced relaxation," read a bunch of bullet points off of a sheet of paper.
- 4/28/2021
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
by Tim Brayton
With a day between us and the Oscar nominations announcement, it’s time to start digging into some of the categories that fly under the radar a little bit without the proper love and attention. For now, I’d like to walk you through the five films nominated for Best Animated Feature, ranked in order of how good I think their chances are of winning the big prize...
With a day between us and the Oscar nominations announcement, it’s time to start digging into some of the categories that fly under the radar a little bit without the proper love and attention. For now, I’d like to walk you through the five films nominated for Best Animated Feature, ranked in order of how good I think their chances are of winning the big prize...
- 3/16/2021
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
In this new series, members of Team Film Experience watch and share their reactions to classic films they’ve never seen.
by Tim Brayton
I wish there was a good reason why it took me 26 years to catch up with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, co-winner of the 1993 Palme d'Or, two-time Oscar nominee for Best Cinematography and Best Foreign-Language Film, and the film that did more than probably any other single title to present Chinese art cinema to international audiences in the 1990s. Instead, I only have a very terrible reason: it's 171 minutes long, and I never quite managed to make it my top priority in those moments when I had three uninterrupted hours.
To the surprise of nobody, including myself, that turns out to have been a terrible mistake. As long as the film is – and I'd be fibbing if I said that I never once felt that running...
by Tim Brayton
I wish there was a good reason why it took me 26 years to catch up with Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, co-winner of the 1993 Palme d'Or, two-time Oscar nominee for Best Cinematography and Best Foreign-Language Film, and the film that did more than probably any other single title to present Chinese art cinema to international audiences in the 1990s. Instead, I only have a very terrible reason: it's 171 minutes long, and I never quite managed to make it my top priority in those moments when I had three uninterrupted hours.
To the surprise of nobody, including myself, that turns out to have been a terrible mistake. As long as the film is – and I'd be fibbing if I said that I never once felt that running...
- 10/28/2019
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
This week at Tfe we're celebrating the centennial of one of cinema’s most prolific and legendary producers, Dino De Laurentiis. Here's Tim Brayton...
Yesterday, Eric took us on a tour of the first phase of Dino De Laurentiis's one-of-a-kind career as a producer, the era when he and Carlo Ponti helped usher a number of major works of late Neorealism into the world, introducing the first wave of international art cinema masterpieces. We now arrive at the 1960s, when De Laurenteiis was emboldened by those early successes to indulge himself in the first of his many flights of staggering, ill-advised ambition. Near the start of the decade, De Laurentiis opened a movie studio on the outskirts of Rome, an enormous playground for moviemaking nicknamed Dinocittà.
The Dinocittà experiment perfectly describes De Laurentiis's singular personality. A visionary producer can tell what is going to be popular in the future, and...
Yesterday, Eric took us on a tour of the first phase of Dino De Laurentiis's one-of-a-kind career as a producer, the era when he and Carlo Ponti helped usher a number of major works of late Neorealism into the world, introducing the first wave of international art cinema masterpieces. We now arrive at the 1960s, when De Laurenteiis was emboldened by those early successes to indulge himself in the first of his many flights of staggering, ill-advised ambition. Near the start of the decade, De Laurentiis opened a movie studio on the outskirts of Rome, an enormous playground for moviemaking nicknamed Dinocittà.
The Dinocittà experiment perfectly describes De Laurentiis's singular personality. A visionary producer can tell what is going to be popular in the future, and...
- 8/6/2019
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
by Tim Brayton
The refrain echoing through many of the negative reviews of Disney's new remake of The Lion King – and even a few of the not-as-enthusiastic positive reviews – has been that the film is "pointless." Which, yeah, it is: a scene-by-scene, line-by-line, and frequently shot-by-shot remake of the 1994 classic that is weaker on essentially every possible point of comparison. The only reason to watch the new film while the 1994 film exists is because the new one is in theaters and thus is bigger.
So let's not belabor that. Instead, let's try, as much as possible, to take the film on its on terms. Let's pretend, if we possibly can, that this is a brand new story told using cutting-edge technology, and freed from the shackles of memory and nostalgia. Sad to say, even if that might mean that The Lion King isn't pointless, it's still not very good.
The refrain echoing through many of the negative reviews of Disney's new remake of The Lion King – and even a few of the not-as-enthusiastic positive reviews – has been that the film is "pointless." Which, yeah, it is: a scene-by-scene, line-by-line, and frequently shot-by-shot remake of the 1994 classic that is weaker on essentially every possible point of comparison. The only reason to watch the new film while the 1994 film exists is because the new one is in theaters and thus is bigger.
So let's not belabor that. Instead, let's try, as much as possible, to take the film on its on terms. Let's pretend, if we possibly can, that this is a brand new story told using cutting-edge technology, and freed from the shackles of memory and nostalgia. Sad to say, even if that might mean that The Lion King isn't pointless, it's still not very good.
- 7/25/2019
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
We're celebrating musical star Howard Keel's Centennial this week. Here's Tim Brayton...
Presenting a musical in which Howard Keel plays the obnoxious gunslinger love interest to a famous woman from the Wild West. My apologies if you feel a little bit of déjà vu from that logline: Nathaniel did, after all, just write about Keel's breakout performance in 1950's Annie Get Your Gun, about which every word of that sentence equally applies. And that's absolutely no accident. Warner Bros. had fought to get the rights to that stage musical as a vehicle for its up-and-coming singing star Doris Day, but lost out to MGM. When that film proved to be a hit, Warner's responded by developing an original Western musical based - oh so very loosely - on the life of Calamity Jane, famous frontierswoman and scout.
So eager was the studio to recreate that Annie magic that they...
Presenting a musical in which Howard Keel plays the obnoxious gunslinger love interest to a famous woman from the Wild West. My apologies if you feel a little bit of déjà vu from that logline: Nathaniel did, after all, just write about Keel's breakout performance in 1950's Annie Get Your Gun, about which every word of that sentence equally applies. And that's absolutely no accident. Warner Bros. had fought to get the rights to that stage musical as a vehicle for its up-and-coming singing star Doris Day, but lost out to MGM. When that film proved to be a hit, Warner's responded by developing an original Western musical based - oh so very loosely - on the life of Calamity Jane, famous frontierswoman and scout.
So eager was the studio to recreate that Annie magic that they...
- 4/11/2019
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
By Tim Brayton
The Film Experience is going to look at the films of 1972 all month in preparation for the Supporting Actress Smackdown celebrating that year's nominees. It was a strong year for cinema in general, but in the history of screen animation, it's nothing less than one of the single most importany years ever. For it was in 1972 that a 27-year-old PhD student at the University of Utah named Edwin "Ed" Catmull, aided by fellow student Fred Parke, laboriously created a wireframe model of his own left hand, applied a series of polygonal shapes to it, and made it move along the joints between those polygons.
That might sound dully, deadeningly technical, and in a very real way, it is: Catmull and Parke were working in the storied computer lab of Dr. Ivan Sutherland, which was focused on pure research and industrial applications. Catmull himself was the only member...
The Film Experience is going to look at the films of 1972 all month in preparation for the Supporting Actress Smackdown celebrating that year's nominees. It was a strong year for cinema in general, but in the history of screen animation, it's nothing less than one of the single most importany years ever. For it was in 1972 that a 27-year-old PhD student at the University of Utah named Edwin "Ed" Catmull, aided by fellow student Fred Parke, laboriously created a wireframe model of his own left hand, applied a series of polygonal shapes to it, and made it move along the joints between those polygons.
That might sound dully, deadeningly technical, and in a very real way, it is: Catmull and Parke were working in the storied computer lab of Dr. Ivan Sutherland, which was focused on pure research and industrial applications. Catmull himself was the only member...
- 9/10/2018
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
Our year of the month is 1970. Here's Tim Brayton...
From the standpoint of 1970, we find ourselves at the dawn of what is almost certainly the least-interesting decade in the history of American animation. Television screens were then dominated by the flat, cheap nonsense of Hanna-Barbera while Warner Bros. and MGM had abandoned their short film programs. Just about the only person trying to do anything with the medium was Ralph Bakshi, whose vulgar cartoons for adults were very often "fascinating," but almost never "good." The problem, in all likelihood, is that for 40 years, American animation had been primarily a matter of people reacting to the things Walt Disney had done; and in 1970, Walt Disney had been dead for four years.
This left his namesake studio in a state of full panic and confusion, looking to find any sort of project that felt like it might be "what Walt would have done.
From the standpoint of 1970, we find ourselves at the dawn of what is almost certainly the least-interesting decade in the history of American animation. Television screens were then dominated by the flat, cheap nonsense of Hanna-Barbera while Warner Bros. and MGM had abandoned their short film programs. Just about the only person trying to do anything with the medium was Ralph Bakshi, whose vulgar cartoons for adults were very often "fascinating," but almost never "good." The problem, in all likelihood, is that for 40 years, American animation had been primarily a matter of people reacting to the things Walt Disney had done; and in 1970, Walt Disney had been dead for four years.
This left his namesake studio in a state of full panic and confusion, looking to find any sort of project that felt like it might be "what Walt would have done.
- 4/24/2018
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
Mini William Holden Centennial celebration. We're beginning, oddly enough, with his final film. Here's Tim Brayton...
The 1981 film S.O.B. wasn't meant to be William Holden's final film: the star died in a household accident a few months after the film premiered, at a mere 63 years old. But it offers a pleasing symmetry to his career to end this way: Holden's big breakthrough, in 1950, was the acid-laced Hollywood satire Sunset Blvd., and there's a comforting rightness that it was with an acid-laced Hollywood satire that his career would end.
Not that S.O.B. has anything on Sunset Blvd., though it's a compelling oddity, and it's one of the few films made by writer-director-producer Blake Edwards after his 1960s heyday that offers all that much to chew on. The film is a deeply caustic fable of how superproducer Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) churned out the biggest money-loser in Hollywood history one day, went...
The 1981 film S.O.B. wasn't meant to be William Holden's final film: the star died in a household accident a few months after the film premiered, at a mere 63 years old. But it offers a pleasing symmetry to his career to end this way: Holden's big breakthrough, in 1950, was the acid-laced Hollywood satire Sunset Blvd., and there's a comforting rightness that it was with an acid-laced Hollywood satire that his career would end.
Not that S.O.B. has anything on Sunset Blvd., though it's a compelling oddity, and it's one of the few films made by writer-director-producer Blake Edwards after his 1960s heyday that offers all that much to chew on. The film is a deeply caustic fable of how superproducer Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) churned out the biggest money-loser in Hollywood history one day, went...
- 4/16/2018
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
by Tim Brayton
If you know one thing about Baby Driver, surely it's that the film was conceived from the ground up to move in perfect time to music. Every aspect of the film that could be tied to the rhythm of the soundtrack was: the movement of the camera, the blocking of the actors, and the cutting between shots.
Perhaps that sounds like an impressive trick. But "impressive" hardly starts to cover it: love the film or not (I was a little cool on it, overall), Baby Driver is indisputably one of 2017's most audacious piece of film craftsmanship, a high-wire act of choreographing every element of the film production process into one steady flow. And by no means the least of this craft came in the form of the editing done by Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos.
The editors' work on this film began unnaturally early...
If you know one thing about Baby Driver, surely it's that the film was conceived from the ground up to move in perfect time to music. Every aspect of the film that could be tied to the rhythm of the soundtrack was: the movement of the camera, the blocking of the actors, and the cutting between shots.
Perhaps that sounds like an impressive trick. But "impressive" hardly starts to cover it: love the film or not (I was a little cool on it, overall), Baby Driver is indisputably one of 2017's most audacious piece of film craftsmanship, a high-wire act of choreographing every element of the film production process into one steady flow. And by no means the least of this craft came in the form of the editing done by Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos.
The editors' work on this film began unnaturally early...
- 1/9/2018
- by Tim Brayton
- FilmExperience
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