July 3, 2011
‘Léon‘ (also known as ‘The Professional’) is a 1994 thriller film written and directed by French director Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno as a mob hitman, Gary Oldman as a corrupt DEA agent, and a young Natalie Portman, in her feature film debut, as a 12-year-old girl who is taken in by the hitman after her family is murdered by corrupt police agents.
Léon is a hitman (or ‘cleaner,’ as he refers to himself) living a solitary life in New York City’s Little Italy. His work comes from a mafioso who operates from the ‘Supreme Macaroni Company’ restaurant. Léon spends his idle time engaging in calisthenics, nurturing a houseplant that early on he describes as his ‘best friend,’ and (in one scene) watching old Gene Kelly musicals. Léon is to some extent an expansion of an idea in Besson’s earlier 1990 film, ‘La Femme Nikita,’ in which Jean Reno plays a similar character named Victor. Besson described Léon as ‘Now maybe Jean is playing the American cousin of Victor. This time he’s more human.’
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June 27, 2011
Inside Job is a 2010 documentary film about the financial crisis of 2007–2010 directed by Charles H. Ferguson, who has described the film as being about ‘the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption.’ In five parts the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the 2008 financial crisis.
The film focuses on changes in the financial industry in the decade leading up to the crisis, the political movement toward deregulation, and how the development of complex trading such as the derivatives market allowed for large increases in risk taking that circumvented older regulations that were intended to control systemic risk.
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June 16, 2011
Barry Lyndon is a 1975 period film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the 1844 novel ‘The Luck of Barry Lyndon’ by William Makepeace Thackeray which recounts the exploits of an 18th century a man of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy.
The film is divided into two halves each headed with a title card: ‘I. By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon.’ ‘II. Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon.’ The epilogue read: ‘It was in the reign of King George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.’
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June 6, 2011
Fade to Black is a 2004 documentary about the career of US rapper Jay-Z. Filmed around the time of ‘The Black Album,’ the movie also features many other famous names in hip hop music. This live concert at Madison Square Garden was meant to be Jay-Z’s final performance, as he announced his intentions to retire from the industry.
Fade to Black runs through some of the major parts of Jay-Z’s Madison Square Garden performance while cutting to Jay-Z and his exploits and showing the viewers where his inspiration comes from.
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June 6, 2011
The Show is a 1995 documentary film about hip hop music. It was directed by Brian Robbins and featured interviews with some of hip hop’s biggest names. Def Jam founder Russell Simmons stars in and narrates the film. The documentary chronicles a diverse group of performers preparing to give a major concert at Philadelphia’s Armory.
Interspersed amongst the preparations are interviews with rappers past and present, looks at their personal lives, and commentary on their significance and upon the music. Featured acts and performers include, Slick Rick, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, Biggie Smalls, Kurtis Blow, Sean Combs, and Method Man.
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June 3, 2011
Daft Punk’s Electroma is a 2007 film by French duo Daft Punk. The plot revolves around the quest of two robots (the band members, played by Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich) to become human. The music featured in this film is not by Daft Punk, which is a first for the duo after their previous film and home video releases, ‘D.A.F.T.’ and ‘Interstella 5555.’
The two lead characters appear as the robotic forms of Daft Punk; one wears a silver helmet and the other wears a gold one. An opening scene shows the duo driving in a 1987 Ferrari 412 with its license plate displaying ‘HUMAN.’ After passing through a Southwestern United States landscape, the duo arrives at a town in Inyo County, California. The town’s denizens are robots physically identical to the two main characters, but at different ages, with different clothing and alternating gender.
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May 26, 2011
Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 American action and horror film starring Samuel L. Jackson, which follows the events of hundreds of snakes being released on a passenger plane in an attempt to kill a trial witness. During filming, Jackson did not come into contact with any live snakes, due to a contract clause preventing snakes from being within 25 feet (8 m) of the actor. The story is credited to David Dalessandro, a first-time Hollywood writer. He developed the concept in 1992 after reading a nature magazine article about tree snakes climbing onto planes in cargo during World War II.
Taking advantage of the Internet buzz for what had been a minor film in their 2006 line-up, New Line Cinema ordered five days of additional shooting. While re-shoots normally imply problems with a film, the producers opted to add new scenes to the film to change the PG-13 rating to R and bring it in line with growing fan expectations. The most notable addition was a revision of a catchphrase from the film that was parodied on the Internet by fans of the film, capitalizing on Jackson’s typically foul-mouthed and violent film persona: ‘Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!’
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May 25, 2011
The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. The film is based on the novel of the same name, by Stephen King, about a writer with a wife and young son who accepts the job of an off-season caretaker at an isolated hotel.
The son, who possesses psychic abilities, is able to see things in the future and past, such as the ghosts in the hotel. Soon after moving in, and after a paralyzing winter storm that leaves the family snowed in, the father becomes influenced by the supernatural presence in the haunted hotel; he descends into madness and attempts to murder his wife and son.
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May 20, 2011
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto is a 2008 open source documentary film about the changing concept of copyright directed by Brett Gaylor.
Created over a period of six years, the documentary film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to the Open Source Cinema website, helping to create the ‘world’s first open source documentary.’ Gaylor encourages people to create their own remixes from this movie, using media available from the Open Source Cinema website, or other websites like YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, or MySpace.
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May 18, 2011
Blue Velvet is a 1986 American mystery film written and directed by David Lynch. The movie exhibits elements of both film noir and surrealism. The film features Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, and Laura Dern. The title is taken from the 1963 Bobby Vinton song of the same name.
Although initially detested by some mainstream critics, the film is now widely acclaimed, and earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. As an example of a director casting against the norm, Blue Velvet is also noted for re-launching Hopper’s career and for providing Rossellini with a dramatic outlet beyond the work as a fashion model and a cosmetics spokeswoman for which she had until then been known.
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May 18, 2011
Deep Throat is a 1972 American pornographic starring Linda Lovelace (Linda Susan Boreman). One of the first pornographic films to feature a plot, character development and relatively high production standards, Deep Throat earned mainstream attention and launched the ‘porn chic’ trend despite the film being banned in some regions and the subject of obscenity trials.
The 61-minute movie is intended to be humorous, with highly tongue-in-cheek dialogue and songs; fireworks going off and bells ringing during Lovelace’s orgasms. The film’s popularity helped launch a brief period of upper-middle class interest in explicit pornography referred to by Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times as ‘porno chic.’ Several mainstream celebrities admitted to having seen Deep Throat, including Martin Scorsese, Truman Capote, Jack Nicholson and Johnny Carson.
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May 4, 2011
The Elite Squad (Portuguese: Tropa de Elite) is a 2007 Brazilian film directed by José Padilha. The film is a semi-fictional account of the BOPE (Portuguese: Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais), the Special Police Operations Battalion of the Rio de Janeiro Military Police.
The script was written by Bráulio Mantovani, based on the book ‘Elite da Tropa’ by sociologist Luiz Eduardo Soares and two former BOPE captains, André Batista and Rodrigo Pimentel. When the first version of the film leaked, it caused a major controversy for its portrayal of Captain Nascimento’s unpunished police brutality in slums; some saw it as glamourizing police violence.
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