Crimson Peak may be the quintessential Guillermo del Toro film, as it compresses his fetishistic attention to detail into a single looming set where creaking floorboards, scores of dying moths, and the frequent intrusions of mutilated ghosts are just pieces in the giant dollhouse where the director merrily plays. The combination of gothic ghost story and harlequin romance doesn’t break new ground for either genre, but the intensity of Brandt Gordon’s art direction and Kate Hawley’s costume design reinforce the innate connection that period romance and horror share in how these genres so purely express their most profound ideas through ornate style.
Amusingly, the focus of the film’s first act—the gamesmanship of high society’s courtship rituals playing out in well-lit parlors—is no less tense than the story’s eventual retreat into the dark confines of Allerdale Hall. The most dominant sound effects in...
Amusingly, the focus of the film’s first act—the gamesmanship of high society’s courtship rituals playing out in well-lit parlors—is no less tense than the story’s eventual retreat into the dark confines of Allerdale Hall. The most dominant sound effects in...
- 5/13/2024
- by Jake Cole
- Slant Magazine
For generations, women who pushed against their expected roles in life were written off as mad, and in extreme cases, locked away. For equally as long, these women were fodder for art that depicted their madness as evil. In this last century, we’ve seen contemporary women take back their sister’s agency. Like Antoinette Cosway, the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë‘s 1847 novel “Jane Eyre”, given agency by Jean Rhys in her 1966 feminist revisioning “Wide Sargasso Sea.” The same can be said for Victoria Mas, whose novel “Le bal des folles” and its subsequent adaptation, “The Mad Women’s Ball,” by Mélanie Laurent (with co-writer Christophe Deslandes) seeks to reclaim the agency of “mad” women were treated less as people and more as experiments at France’s infamous Salpêtrière mental hospital.
Continue reading ‘The Mad Women’s Ball’: Mélanie Laurent’s Latest Drama Is An Uncompromising Defense Of...
Continue reading ‘The Mad Women’s Ball’: Mélanie Laurent’s Latest Drama Is An Uncompromising Defense Of...
- 9/13/2021
- by Marya E. Gates
- The Playlist
Most cinephiles associate the Merchant Ivory catalogue with English dramas like “A Room With a View” and “Howards End” — even the film company’s own Wikipedia page makes amusing note of how many of their best-known features follow “genteel characters who suffer from disillusionment and tragic entanglements” and often involve some kind of house — but with 44 films in its library, Merchant Ivory contains its own vastly different multitudes.
One such unexpected entry: the Jean Rhys adaptation “Quartet,” inspired by the “Wide Sargasso Sea” author’s own experiences as an up-and-comer in swinging Paris. While the film’s pedigree is classic Merchant Ivory — written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant — its subject matter and tone are a fair bit different than some of the more staid dramas in the company’s oeuvre. For one thing, it’s a surprisingly dramatic story of a love triangle gone darkly awry.
One such unexpected entry: the Jean Rhys adaptation “Quartet,” inspired by the “Wide Sargasso Sea” author’s own experiences as an up-and-comer in swinging Paris. While the film’s pedigree is classic Merchant Ivory — written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant — its subject matter and tone are a fair bit different than some of the more staid dramas in the company’s oeuvre. For one thing, it’s a surprisingly dramatic story of a love triangle gone darkly awry.
- 4/24/2019
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Donald Glover described “Guava Island” as “one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on,” and it shows: Every minute of this hour-long short film/music video hybrid exudes the passion of the team behind it. Directed by Hiro Murai, who also helmed the beloved “This Is America” video and has earned acclaim for his work on “Atlanta,” “Barry,” and “Legion,” it’s nevertheless billed as a Childish Gambino film — and that may be its Achilles heel. For all of the film’s vibrant energy, “Guava Island” isn’t a standalone work so much as a tie-in to its creator and star’s ever-ascending career that offers limited rewards to anyone who isn’t already on board.
It’s made with care and precision — cinematographer Christian Sprenger, who also works on “Atlanta” and shot on grainy 16mm, is the absolute Mvp — but there isn’t much content behind the...
It’s made with care and precision — cinematographer Christian Sprenger, who also works on “Atlanta” and shot on grainy 16mm, is the absolute Mvp — but there isn’t much content behind the...
- 4/13/2019
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
The ancient ads of times past, the physical, getting-fuzzier evidence of films watched over and over, the simplicity my Dad can comprehend: we haven't mourned the VHS enough
As gazillions of video recordings reach the end of their useful life, it occurred to me that unlike the LP, and Polaroids, the demise of the big, bulky VHS tape hasn't been mourned half so much as it deserves. According to the Washington Post, in 2005 94.7m American households still owned VCRs. I doubt it would be quarter of that now. I can count the people I know under 60 with video players on my two index fingers.
Before home-recorded videos decline entirely from functional to shabby retro-decoration, I'm going to press pause and give them their clunky due. Here's why I love watching films on video.
They wear their loving proudly
Like teddy bears and your comfiest pair of jeans, you can tell...
As gazillions of video recordings reach the end of their useful life, it occurred to me that unlike the LP, and Polaroids, the demise of the big, bulky VHS tape hasn't been mourned half so much as it deserves. According to the Washington Post, in 2005 94.7m American households still owned VCRs. I doubt it would be quarter of that now. I can count the people I know under 60 with video players on my two index fingers.
Before home-recorded videos decline entirely from functional to shabby retro-decoration, I'm going to press pause and give them their clunky due. Here's why I love watching films on video.
They wear their loving proudly
Like teddy bears and your comfiest pair of jeans, you can tell...
- 10/1/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Australian film-maker Jan Sharp was honoured at the Telluride Film Festival. The festival was dedicated to both Sharp and Us producer Bingham Ray. Sharp’s film credits include Wide Sargasso Sea and Echoes of Paradise.
Accompanying The Sapphires and documentary On Borrowed Time by David Bradbury about film-maker Paul Cox and his life on a liver transplant waiting list were short films Rain by Tom and Sam McKeith, Barn Owl by Anna Spencer and Boo! by Rupert Reid.
The announcement:
Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival ending today was dedicated to the late Australian writer/producer/director Jan Sharp, as well as to the late Us producer Bingham Ray.
Jan’s long career began at Film Australia and included credits Wild Sargasso Sea and The Good Wife.
Bingham was a co-founder of October Films, a leading independent distribution company of the 1990s, and a former president of United Artists.
Australian films...
Accompanying The Sapphires and documentary On Borrowed Time by David Bradbury about film-maker Paul Cox and his life on a liver transplant waiting list were short films Rain by Tom and Sam McKeith, Barn Owl by Anna Spencer and Boo! by Rupert Reid.
The announcement:
Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival ending today was dedicated to the late Australian writer/producer/director Jan Sharp, as well as to the late Us producer Bingham Ray.
Jan’s long career began at Film Australia and included credits Wild Sargasso Sea and The Good Wife.
Bingham was a co-founder of October Films, a leading independent distribution company of the 1990s, and a former president of United Artists.
Australian films...
- 9/4/2012
- by Colin Delaney
- Encore Magazine
E.L. James's Twilight fan fiction turned best-selling e-book Fifty Shades of Grey was recently optioned for a reported $5 million by Universal Pictures, and 575,000 paperback copies hit U.S. stores today. When I heard this, I hadn't yet read the book, but I was nonetheless a little tempted to move to space.I realize that I might be alone in my dim view of fan fiction: Jean Rhys's Jane Eyre prequel The Wide Sargasso Sea is required reading in a lot of middle schools. Midnight in Paris made a lot of money even though it could alternately be titled 2 Moveable 2 Feastious. The New York Times gave P.D. James (no relation!) a nice little review for her Death Comes to Pemberly, which I assume is about digging up Jane Austen's arm bones and banging the keyboard of a MacBook Pro. People are reading the hell out of Fifty Shades...
- 4/3/2012
- by Julieanne Smolinski
- Vulture
We chat to director Cary Fukunaga about adapting a 150 year old story, casting Michael Fassbender, and his upcoming projects…
Cary Fukunaga’s bleakly beautiful Jane Eyre sits comfortably amongst the best cinematic adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, and features an outstanding lead performance from Mia Wasikowska. Only its director’s second feature (the first being 2009 Spanish-language immigration drama Sin Nombre), Jane Eyre is now out on DVD in the UK.
We spoke to the film’s young director Cary Fukunaga, about how he avoided making a “cheeseball” glossy period drama, Michael Fassbender’s teeth, his upcoming sci-fi and Us Civil War projects, and why he wants to fit a horse with rubber shoes…
This interview contains potential spoilers for Jane Eyre.
You had to cut a lot from the story so you could make the film, can you please make my day by telling me that there’s going...
Cary Fukunaga’s bleakly beautiful Jane Eyre sits comfortably amongst the best cinematic adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, and features an outstanding lead performance from Mia Wasikowska. Only its director’s second feature (the first being 2009 Spanish-language immigration drama Sin Nombre), Jane Eyre is now out on DVD in the UK.
We spoke to the film’s young director Cary Fukunaga, about how he avoided making a “cheeseball” glossy period drama, Michael Fassbender’s teeth, his upcoming sci-fi and Us Civil War projects, and why he wants to fit a horse with rubber shoes…
This interview contains potential spoilers for Jane Eyre.
You had to cut a lot from the story so you could make the film, can you please make my day by telling me that there’s going...
- 3/9/2012
- Den of Geek
Longtime NCIS viewers looking to learn more about how Ziva David (played by Coté de Pablo) became the woman she is today are in luck, because Karina Lombard has been cast as the badass beauty’s longtime friend and mentor, TVLine has learned exclusively.
Ratings: NCIS Outdraws Idol for First Time Ever
Lombard’s character, named Monique Lisson, was first alluded to in this season’s premiere, when Ziva made mention of a female friend she had in Central America. And when I spoke to series boss Gary Glasberg in January, he shared his plan to “introduce Ziva’s [version of Mike] Franks...
Ratings: NCIS Outdraws Idol for First Time Ever
Lombard’s character, named Monique Lisson, was first alluded to in this season’s premiere, when Ziva made mention of a female friend she had in Central America. And when I spoke to series boss Gary Glasberg in January, he shared his plan to “introduce Ziva’s [version of Mike] Franks...
- 3/5/2012
- by Matt Webb Mitovich
- TVLine.com
When discussing Almayer’s Folly, Chantal Akerman actively resists crediting the source material. Joseph Conrad’s first novel is set in Malaysia at the end of the 19th century and is a grotesque portrait of a young Dutch trader driven to madness by his own foolishness and avarice. A contemporary, sympathetic reading of the novel might commend it for its critique of the dehumanizing tendencies of colonialism, both on the colonized and the colonizer, but Akerman goes a few steps further. The film is less an adaptation than a loose, dream-like reimagining of its central conflict between a European man, his Asian wife, and their mixed-race daughter. Like Jean Rhys’s novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which foregrounds the racist assumptions in Jane Eyre by giving life and a history to Charlotte Bronte’s exotic “madwoman in the attic,” Akerman rebalances the weight of Conrad’s narrative and in doing so finds—surprisingly,...
- 10/23/2011
- MUBI
Ahead of Review's book club on The Hours, Michael Cunningham explains how discovering Virginia Woolf as a teenager inspired him to write his novel about her life – and how his mother provided a surprising solution when he got stuck
Virginia Woolf was great fun at parties. I want to tell you that up front, because Woolf, who died 70 years ago this year, is so often portrayed as the Dark Lady of English letters, all glowery and sad, looking balefully on from a crepuscular corner of literary history with a stone lodged in her pocket.
She did, of course, have her darker interludes. More on that in a moment. But first I'd like to announce, to anyone who might not know, that she, when not sunk in her periodic depressions, was the person one most hoped would come to the party; the one who could speak amusingly on just about any...
Virginia Woolf was great fun at parties. I want to tell you that up front, because Woolf, who died 70 years ago this year, is so often portrayed as the Dark Lady of English letters, all glowery and sad, looking balefully on from a crepuscular corner of literary history with a stone lodged in her pocket.
She did, of course, have her darker interludes. More on that in a moment. But first I'd like to announce, to anyone who might not know, that she, when not sunk in her periodic depressions, was the person one most hoped would come to the party; the one who could speak amusingly on just about any...
- 6/3/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Jane Eyre
Directed by Cary Fukunaga
Written by Moira Buffini
UK, 2011
A curious meld of influences both classical and contemporary, this umpteenth film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s iconic novel amps the story’s gloom and doom for maximum visual splendor, while offering a strictly face-value approach to its evocations of grief, sexual repression, and class, where a bolder vision might have kept up with the film’s distance-rending performances and appropriately bewitching visions of candlelit chambers and neverending moorland.
Sterling and alive in a role already essayed so often, Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right) is Jane Eyre, an unfortunate soul (who nevertheless insists that hers is not a “tale of woe”) falsely lambasted from early childhood as a devious wretch. After being shunned by her surviving family and surviving a long term at a ghoulish, abusive boarding school, she finds work as a governess...
Directed by Cary Fukunaga
Written by Moira Buffini
UK, 2011
A curious meld of influences both classical and contemporary, this umpteenth film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s iconic novel amps the story’s gloom and doom for maximum visual splendor, while offering a strictly face-value approach to its evocations of grief, sexual repression, and class, where a bolder vision might have kept up with the film’s distance-rending performances and appropriately bewitching visions of candlelit chambers and neverending moorland.
Sterling and alive in a role already essayed so often, Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right) is Jane Eyre, an unfortunate soul (who nevertheless insists that hers is not a “tale of woe”) falsely lambasted from early childhood as a devious wretch. After being shunned by her surviving family and surviving a long term at a ghoulish, abusive boarding school, she finds work as a governess...
- 3/26/2011
- by Simon Howell
- SoundOnSight
Sarah Churchwell sees Hemingway through the eyes of his first wife
The 1920s is back in vogue: Baz Luhrmann is remaking The Great Gatsby, a staged reading of Fitzgerald's masterpiece proved a big success off-Broadway last year, and HBO's 1920-set Boardwalk Empire is the flagship programme of the new Sky Atlantic channel. And now comes McLain's The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage, to Hadley Richardson, and their heady days in jazz age Paris. In fact, The Paris Wife also shares in the current fashion for biographical fiction, including Jay Parini's The Passages of Herman Melville, David Lodge's A Man of Parts, about Hg Wells, and David Miller's Today about the death of Joseph Conrad.
The story of The Paris Wife is familiar to anyone who knows A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of "how Paris was in the early days when we were very...
The 1920s is back in vogue: Baz Luhrmann is remaking The Great Gatsby, a staged reading of Fitzgerald's masterpiece proved a big success off-Broadway last year, and HBO's 1920-set Boardwalk Empire is the flagship programme of the new Sky Atlantic channel. And now comes McLain's The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage, to Hadley Richardson, and their heady days in jazz age Paris. In fact, The Paris Wife also shares in the current fashion for biographical fiction, including Jay Parini's The Passages of Herman Melville, David Lodge's A Man of Parts, about Hg Wells, and David Miller's Today about the death of Joseph Conrad.
The story of The Paris Wife is familiar to anyone who knows A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's memoir of "how Paris was in the early days when we were very...
- 3/26/2011
- by Sarah Churchwell
- The Guardian - Film News
In ninth grade I read Jane Eyre of my own volition; it wasn't required reading at my school. The novel was dark and romantic, so of course I adored it. I watched the melodramatic 1943 classic with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles (and a very young Elizabeth Taylor in an uncredited role). I haven't re-read the novel since and was unsure what to expect from this 2011 Jane Eyre film adaptation. Would any slight reference to Wide Sargasso Sea be made? (Answer: not really.) I found myself inferring certain things from that parallel novel as I watched Cary Fukunaga's take on Charlotte Bronte's original story.
Mia Wasikowska plays our heroine Jane as undiminished, wistful and a sort of realist. "I imagine things I'm powerless to execute," she confesses to her employer's housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench!). In flashbacks, we see how Jane's young fire slowly dims in her dealings with a...
Mia Wasikowska plays our heroine Jane as undiminished, wistful and a sort of realist. "I imagine things I'm powerless to execute," she confesses to her employer's housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench!). In flashbacks, we see how Jane's young fire slowly dims in her dealings with a...
- 3/25/2011
- by Elizabeth Stoddard
- Slackerwood
Robert here. Did you know that yesterday was the twenty year anniversary of the Nc-17 rating? That tag, applied to the most controversial of films, has developed the most controversial reputation itself, with artists and advocates complaining that it's implemented unevenly and scares away theaters an rental providers. We're going to leave all that be for now and instead celebrate the ten films that, despite or because of their Nc-17 reputations, lead the pack. Here are the top ten money-making Nc-17 films.
10. Wide Sargasso Sea (1993) $1,614,784
Rated Nc-17 for strong, explicit sexuality
Does this one not sound familiar to you? Released early on in the rating's lifetime, speculation is that while there's plenty of sex, it was the full-frontal male nudity that pushed the MPAA rating's board over the edge, probably the sort of thing that would easily get an R today (but you never know). Nc-17 films were relatively rare...
10. Wide Sargasso Sea (1993) $1,614,784
Rated Nc-17 for strong, explicit sexuality
Does this one not sound familiar to you? Released early on in the rating's lifetime, speculation is that while there's plenty of sex, it was the full-frontal male nudity that pushed the MPAA rating's board over the edge, probably the sort of thing that would easily get an R today (but you never know). Nc-17 films were relatively rare...
- 9/28/2010
- by Robert
- FilmExperience
Rebecca Hall is full of promise at 28 – but can she find the burning sense of need or danger required to take over an entire movie?
It's tricky being an actress. Think of it this way: any young actress would like to be in the movie Frost/Nixon. But she can see that most of the chewy parts are for men. However, that very clever writer Peter Morgan has written in a scene in which David Frost, on his way to America, meets an attractive young woman on the plane (let's call her Caroline Cushing), and thereafter carries her along with him as eye-catching back-up and ego masseuse in the whole Nixon enterprise. She goes out for food when he's doing research; she wears a series of moderately revealing summer clothes; and she evidently provides the opportunity for what Nixon regards gloomily and enviously as "fornicating".
It happens that the role...
It's tricky being an actress. Think of it this way: any young actress would like to be in the movie Frost/Nixon. But she can see that most of the chewy parts are for men. However, that very clever writer Peter Morgan has written in a scene in which David Frost, on his way to America, meets an attractive young woman on the plane (let's call her Caroline Cushing), and thereafter carries her along with him as eye-catching back-up and ego masseuse in the whole Nixon enterprise. She goes out for food when he's doing research; she wears a series of moderately revealing summer clothes; and she evidently provides the opportunity for what Nixon regards gloomily and enviously as "fornicating".
It happens that the role...
- 6/10/2010
- by David Thomson
- The Guardian - Film News
So the Bronte sisters are due for some makeovers in the next year or so. I guess Jane Austen's too busy having her canon B-movie serialized for our displeasure. So now some hot new directors move on to the other ladymakers to see if they can break that sophomore slump.
Cary Fukunaga, who directed what should be the best foreign picture of the year but won't be -- Sin Nombre -- is due to remake Jane Eyre. In his version, he's planning on focusing more on the Gothic. I'd much rather see him tackle Wide Sargasso Sea, but that's just me. Fukunaga does well with the despairing and downtrodden, so I like this.
Meanwhile, Andrea Arnold, fresh from her buzz on Fish Tank (which I guess I will be reviewing after all), has decided to take on Wuthering Heights. The Wuthering Heights project has been passed like a dirty diaper around town,...
Cary Fukunaga, who directed what should be the best foreign picture of the year but won't be -- Sin Nombre -- is due to remake Jane Eyre. In his version, he's planning on focusing more on the Gothic. I'd much rather see him tackle Wide Sargasso Sea, but that's just me. Fukunaga does well with the despairing and downtrodden, so I like this.
Meanwhile, Andrea Arnold, fresh from her buzz on Fish Tank (which I guess I will be reviewing after all), has decided to take on Wuthering Heights. The Wuthering Heights project has been passed like a dirty diaper around town,...
- 1/21/2010
- by Brian Prisco
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