Author Archive: degroot.jerome
Finding Peter Tolan in ‘Finding Amanda’
Last week I had the opportunity speak with Peter Tolan, writer and director of Finding Amanda, now available on DVD from Magnolia Entertainment. A very polite Peter apologized in advance for any background noise as he was taking a stroll through the 30′s on New York City’s West Side, not far from my virtual Starbucks [...]
In Plain Sight
USA’s new series In Plain Sight will prove to be a satisfactory diversion from the television network summer schedules packed with repeats. The opening of the show is reminiscent of other crime dramas, with the tense first few minutes playing out a scene identifying the protagonist and antagonist for that show. However, this is where [...]
The 48th Times BFI London Film Festival
The 48th London Film Festival wakes the British public from its soporific summer of blockbusters and once again presents an incredibly varied and diverse programme. The presentations are less showy than last year but feel more important. The festival kicks off with Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake which has already won awards in Venice, and concludes [...]
McLibel
Who were the first people to take on the corporations and win both the legal and the media battle? Fast Food Nation, Super Size Me, the career of Michael Moore can all be seen to be directly indebted to the McLibel two, Helen Steel and Dave Morris. In 1990 McDonald’s issued 5 writs for libel [...]
Shaun of the Dead
Why are we so interested in Zombies at the moment? I’m tempted to think that it is a culturally cyclical thing – that the last two upsurges in Zombie movies, the Bodysnatching of the 50s and Romero in the late 70s both represented a fear of the mob, of the faceless degradation of the Zombie [...]
Zatoichi
A blind masseur wanders the Japanese countryside, dispensing moral justice and wry advice. Takeshi Kitano’s new film takes on a fully-formed character (the sightless swordsman Zatoichi as played by Shintano Katsu is the star of some 26 films from his inception in 1962 to 1989) and numerous samurai clichés, and intertwines them to produce a [...]
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Demy’s whimsical yet serious-minded film is both innocent curio and document of nouvelle vague aspiration. A completely sung script at once unsettles the audience and distances them from the text in a Brechtian fashion, but also charms with its verve and ingenuousness. Starring the impossibly beautiful Catherine Deneuve, the film attempts to meld the emotional [...]
Un chien andalou / L’Age D’or
A man watches from a balcony as a cloud flits across the moon. In the next shot the same man opens a passive woman’s eye wide and slits it with a cut-throat razor. Aggressive, disturbing, subversive–in two swift cuts (pun intended) lies the essence of Un chien andalou, Buñuel and Dali’s still astonishing film/artwork from [...]
The British Academy Awards
You would have been a bit confused at this year’s BAFTAs had you been to the movies relatively regularly this year. The nomination lists were conservative to the point of absurdity–to the extent that wanting Johnny Depp to win Best Actor wasn’t just because of his brilliance but just to make things a bit more [...]
Jerome’s Film 2003–The View From Britain
First, some good, bad, and downright ugly film things this year… The Good: The continuing genius of South American film making (21 Grams, Y tu mama tambien, City of God); some good sequels (LOTR, X2, T3); Tarantino making event movies actually count, and kicking just about every single concievable type of ass; continued renaissance of [...]
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