The Last King of Scotland.In 2007, Forest Whitaker won the Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator and army general Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (2006), becoming only the fourth Black man to win Best Actor. Lauded as the role of his career, critics praised his “full-throated, technically accomplished” performance, and his ability to “seize the space and show us how he can rage”.“Full-throated” the performance was indeed, but it was a throat filled with an accent that neither sounded like Amin’s nor any person from Koboko, northern Uganda, where the general was born. “Technically accomplished,” but the accent, directed by dialect coach Robert Easton, was neither technical, nor accomplished. Linguistically speaking, Whitaker’s accent is riddled with instances of the US English rhotic R pronunciation (which is pronounced at the back of the throat without a trill), and a combination of vowel pronunciations from across East Africa,...
- 11/9/2023
- MUBI
There’s an alarming degree of disingenuousness, or perhaps merely naiveté, permeating “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.” To begin with, there’s that title, “The Untold Story,” which ignores a number of earlier documentaries not to mention the significant amount of scholarship on pioneering filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché. Also omitted is any mention of the 2009 Gaumont and Kino DVD box sets that made 66 of her films available. These are what can be called inconvenient truths, for Pamela B. Green, director of “Be Natural,” is on a mission to discover why — supposedly — no one has ever heard of Alice Guy-Blaché.
As Green tells it, the reason is pure and simple: Because she was a woman, Guy-Blaché was written out of the history books. That’s not entirely wrong. Alice Guy, as she was then known, was present at the very start of the film industry and played a crucial...
As Green tells it, the reason is pure and simple: Because she was a woman, Guy-Blaché was written out of the history books. That’s not entirely wrong. Alice Guy, as she was then known, was present at the very start of the film industry and played a crucial...
- 5/31/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
Gambling, backstabbing, accidental brilliance, industrial sabotage, and suspicious disappearances all had a role in the birth of film. This is a look at the Victorian-era men who played vital roles in making movies possible.
The transition of film from still photography to the burgeoning industry that it is today did not happen overnight. Moving pictures began as a novelty act. In the mid 19th century, photographers would place successive metal film prints into spinning disks to create pictures that “moved”. Later, it was a wager by railroad tycoon Leland Stanford that gave moving pictures their first practical application. In 1878, he wanted to see if a horse ever had all of its legs off the ground when it ran, and a set-up of cameras in quick succession by Eadweard Muybridge gave him the answer of “yes”. Muybridge would develop this idea further, into a spinning lantern called the Zoopraxiscope to study the movement of animals.
The transition of film from still photography to the burgeoning industry that it is today did not happen overnight. Moving pictures began as a novelty act. In the mid 19th century, photographers would place successive metal film prints into spinning disks to create pictures that “moved”. Later, it was a wager by railroad tycoon Leland Stanford that gave moving pictures their first practical application. In 1878, he wanted to see if a horse ever had all of its legs off the ground when it ran, and a set-up of cameras in quick succession by Eadweard Muybridge gave him the answer of “yes”. Muybridge would develop this idea further, into a spinning lantern called the Zoopraxiscope to study the movement of animals.
- 6/30/2017
- by feeds@cinelinx.com (G.S. Perno)
- Cinelinx
A Louisiana woman who was featured along with her family in the 2012 reality TV show Bayou Billionaires was killed Monday in an apparent murder-suicide, according to police.
Valerie Dowden Wells was shot multiple times as she sat in her car near a McDonald’s parking lot in Shreveport, Louisiana, police Sgt. Rod Johnson tells People.
Wells, 47, was killed by Robert Paul Gaddy, who then turned the gun on himself, Johnson says. Gaddy and Wells were both taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead and he later died.
“We know they had a relationship of some type, but...
Valerie Dowden Wells was shot multiple times as she sat in her car near a McDonald’s parking lot in Shreveport, Louisiana, police Sgt. Rod Johnson tells People.
Wells, 47, was killed by Robert Paul Gaddy, who then turned the gun on himself, Johnson says. Gaddy and Wells were both taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead and he later died.
“We know they had a relationship of some type, but...
- 11/8/2016
- by Adam Carlson
- PEOPLE.com
What Are You Watching? is a weekly space for The A.V Club’s film critics and readers to share their thoughts, observations, and opinions on movies new and old.
The thing about the dross of the early silent period, especially the stuff that came out of the Unites States and Great Britain, is that the titles often sound like really spot-on parodies of the era, like Mr. Pecksniff Fetches The Doctor (1904). Pecksniff is a legitimately terrible film by the British cinema pioneer Robert W. Paul that contains one interesting moment: a sequence where the father-to-be of the title dashes madly down a real city street but arrives, a cut later, at a house that is represented by a painted backdrop, like something you’d see in a community theater.
In the mid-1900s, Paul (who also made plenty of good movies) had a habit of mixing real London locations...
The thing about the dross of the early silent period, especially the stuff that came out of the Unites States and Great Britain, is that the titles often sound like really spot-on parodies of the era, like Mr. Pecksniff Fetches The Doctor (1904). Pecksniff is a legitimately terrible film by the British cinema pioneer Robert W. Paul that contains one interesting moment: a sequence where the father-to-be of the title dashes madly down a real city street but arrives, a cut later, at a house that is represented by a painted backdrop, like something you’d see in a community theater.
In the mid-1900s, Paul (who also made plenty of good movies) had a habit of mixing real London locations...
- 10/28/2016
- by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
- avclub.com
Good Universe arrives on the Croisette with a pair of animation sales titles, Norm Of The North and Zorgamazoo.
Splash Entertainment’s Norm Of The North pits Rob Schneider against The Hangover franchise breakout Ken Jeong.
The story follows a fun-loving polar bear and his three lemming pals in their bid to save their Arctic home from a cut-throat developer. Heather Graham and Loretta Devine also star.
Trevor Wall directs from a screenplay by Jamie Lissow. Producers are Mike Young, Liz Young, Nicolas Atlan, Steve Rosen and Ken Katsumoto.
Vanguard Animation’s Zorgamazoo is based on Robert Paul Weston children’s book about an imaginative young girl who escapes the clutches of her governess and stumbles upon a magical world.
There she teams up with the indigenous Zorgles to thwart an evil doctor’s plan and save Zorgamazoo.
Splash Entertainment’s Norm Of The North pits Rob Schneider against The Hangover franchise breakout Ken Jeong.
The story follows a fun-loving polar bear and his three lemming pals in their bid to save their Arctic home from a cut-throat developer. Heather Graham and Loretta Devine also star.
Trevor Wall directs from a screenplay by Jamie Lissow. Producers are Mike Young, Liz Young, Nicolas Atlan, Steve Rosen and Ken Katsumoto.
Vanguard Animation’s Zorgamazoo is based on Robert Paul Weston children’s book about an imaginative young girl who escapes the clutches of her governess and stumbles upon a magical world.
There she teams up with the indigenous Zorgles to thwart an evil doctor’s plan and save Zorgamazoo.
- 5/14/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Later today, we have a Christmas-themed edition of Scenes We Love, in which you’ll find a number of favorite movie moments of varying genres and content. Some of them involve Santa Claus. So, in lieu of finding a short film made by or featuring someone related to a new film out this week, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the earliest cinematic appearances of the jolly old holiday mascot. If you want to go back further than your usual classics-honoring tradition of watching Miracle on 34th Street, definitely check out these five ancient shorts. One of the scenes I nearly chose for the forthcoming feature is the opening of City of Lost Children, which isn’t quite a Christmas movie but it does include Santa-infused dream sequences. And those sequences tend to remind me of the dreamy fantasies of early Santa films. For example, here...
- 12/23/2012
- by Christopher Campbell
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Don't update Taylor Swift's address in your contacts just yet! The actress didn't buy a home in Massachusetts, contrary to an earlier report. Despite earlier reports that Taylor Swift purchased a $5 million house next door to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Ma, it turns out that the country crooner hasn't planted roots in the beachside town. Though it wouldn't surprise us if she did eventually! Taylor has been dating Conor Kennedy, the 18-year-old grandson of the late Robert F. Kennedy, for the last two months, and lately, the two have been inseparable! A New York hedge fund manager reportedly signed a contract to buy the property at 27 Marchant Ave. but the sale has not closed yet, according to Paul Grover, a principal in Robert Paul Properties. Maybe Taylor will snatch up another home nearby! Do You think Taylor and Conor make a cute couple? [Cape Cod Online] --Jennifer Kamm More on...
- 8/21/2012
- by Hollywood Life Staff
- HollywoodLife
'Thank you, taxpayer,' says BFI as British film heritage preserved on ice in state-of-the-art Master Film Store in Warwickshire
It could make a good movie. A mysterious building on the site of a former nuclear bunker for which there are no signs or even opportunities to see it from the road. Inside will be state-owned artefacts as precious as they are dangerous.
But this is no pitch. This is the nation's new £12m Master Film Store and is considered one of the most important buildings for the preservation of British film ever built.
The store has been built on a nuclear bunker site deep in the Warwickshire countryside and will be capable of holding more than 450,000 cans of the nation's film – everything from Hitchcock to Ealing to Carry On.
Robin Baker, head curator of the BFI national archive, said it was an important moment for Britain's film heritage. "I...
It could make a good movie. A mysterious building on the site of a former nuclear bunker for which there are no signs or even opportunities to see it from the road. Inside will be state-owned artefacts as precious as they are dangerous.
But this is no pitch. This is the nation's new £12m Master Film Store and is considered one of the most important buildings for the preservation of British film ever built.
The store has been built on a nuclear bunker site deep in the Warwickshire countryside and will be capable of holding more than 450,000 cans of the nation's film – everything from Hitchcock to Ealing to Carry On.
Robin Baker, head curator of the BFI national archive, said it was an important moment for Britain's film heritage. "I...
- 8/29/2011
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
Influential teacher, critic and pioneer in the field of film studies
'Why should we take Hitchcock seriously? It is a pity the question has to be raised. If the cinema were truly regarded as an autonomous art, not as a mere adjunct of the novel or the drama – if we were able yet to see films instead of mentally reducing them to literature – it would be unnecessary." The opening lines of the first book by the film critic and teacher Robin Wood, who has died at the age of 78, had a remarkable and lasting impact on the field of film studies both in and beyond academia.
Before he published Hitchcock's Films in 1965, there were – in English, as opposed to French – virtually no books on film directors, and few books of any kind that brought either rigour or sympathy to the analysis of popular cinema. The teaching of so-called "film appreciation...
'Why should we take Hitchcock seriously? It is a pity the question has to be raised. If the cinema were truly regarded as an autonomous art, not as a mere adjunct of the novel or the drama – if we were able yet to see films instead of mentally reducing them to literature – it would be unnecessary." The opening lines of the first book by the film critic and teacher Robin Wood, who has died at the age of 78, had a remarkable and lasting impact on the field of film studies both in and beyond academia.
Before he published Hitchcock's Films in 1965, there were – in English, as opposed to French – virtually no books on film directors, and few books of any kind that brought either rigour or sympathy to the analysis of popular cinema. The teaching of so-called "film appreciation...
- 1/4/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
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