tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54339435335677265982012-01-25T09:37:52.577ZSir, you arouse the artist in me. (As the bartender said in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock.)Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comBlogger1721100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-55799781378389954332012-01-25T09:37:00.001Z2012-01-25T09:37:52.607Z

There are a handful of writers on cinema that I must have within reach at all times. V.F. Perkins is one, David Bordwell another, and critics like James Agee and A.O. Scott. But none more so than André Bazin, critic, theoretician and poet of cinema (a something of a godfather of François Truffaut). Despite sometimes getting it wrong his ideas are almost always interesting and his sentences almost

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-2503127604250475512012-01-14T12:18:00.003Z2012-01-14T12:18:52.817Z

I wrote a post about Henry Hathaway last summer (link here) and I began by saying that very little had been written about him, and that he was not in the least appreciated as much as he should be. Since then I have seen ever more of his films and become more impressed by his talents and his consistency. Let me just mention two films today, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and Souls at Sea (1937),

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-89785394556762044362012-01-07T23:31:00.000Z2012-01-07T23:31:34.982Z

It is 2012, the holidays are over and Fredrik on Film is back. How have you been? The first post of the year will of course be about 2011. I am afraid I saw a depressingly low number of new releases. That is partly because few films come to the corner of Scotland where I toil away, and if they do they are shown only for a very short time. Also, since I move back and forth between Scotland and

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-63918568688898925942011-12-20T10:45:00.003Z2011-12-20T11:21:28.668Z

Yes it is true, Christmas is back, and the blog will take a two week vacation. Well deserved if you ask me, which I am sure you do. Here is a suitable film from the GPO Film Unit (which I wrote about the other week).

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-17840268842002630072011-12-11T11:02:00.000Z2011-12-11T11:10:17.798Z

For some reason one of the most read blog posts here is the one about the cooperation between Derek Jarman and Pet Shop Boys (found here). I thought I continue along the music track but instead of British electronica it will be British rock this time, in the form of Dire Straits. I am not a huge fan, nothing there like my deep love for Pet Shop Boys, but some of their songs are great, and

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-41762574977157024362011-12-05T01:19:00.000Z2011-12-05T01:19:13.955Z

The other day I was watching De hombre a hombre (1949) an early film by Hugo Fregonese, a nomadic filmmaker originally from Argentina. It got me thinking of another South American-born filmmaker who had a nomadic career, the Brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti. He came to Britain in the 1930s and began working at the GPO Film Unit. GPO stands for General Post Office and the films produce by this

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-79127326571882551232011-11-27T19:30:00.000Z2011-11-27T19:56:51.685Z

In friday's Guardian there was a piece by Rick Moody about Frank Miller, 300 (2006) and what Moody considered is the strong presence of "crypto-fascism" in present Hollywood cinema. The starting point for the article was apparently Frank Miller's attack on the Occupy Wall Street-movement. Moody is supportive of that movement, and Miller's attack was provocative, not to say offensive. So Moody is 

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-39619827724266199892011-11-20T22:45:00.000Z2011-11-20T22:48:03.061Z

Once in younger days me and a friend were making up mottos and one was "Even the avant-garde has its conventions!". That was in some kind of protest against the cult of the avant-garde we sometimes felt was running amok in the art world. This blog have been almost exclusively concerned with full-length narrative feature films, with the occasional post on music videos or TV. It just comes more

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-91188313841734844462011-11-11T23:45:00.001Z2011-11-13T00:32:57.651Z

Czech New Wave, French New Wave, New Australian Cinema. To use the nation as a organising principle when talking about films and film history is to some extent straightforward and uncomplicated. Writing a book about the film history of Chile is a perfectly legitimate subject. Nations and nationality clearly matters. But how and when is not always clear and it is easy to become lazy. The nation

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-31366595951479792582011-10-28T17:56:00.000+01:002011-10-28T17:56:44.567+01:00

The early Tintin albums were inspired by silent cinema, and they in turn inspired cinema. But all of Hergé's 23 proper Tintin albums, are should they be called graphic novels?, are very cinematic yet there have been few film versions. I myself have seen only one, the non-animated Tintin and the Blue Oranges (Tintin et les oranges bleues 1964), which is not based on any of the albums. I have also

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-84963334869690187302011-10-23T01:35:00.000+01:002011-10-23T01:38:47.530+01:00

It is time for a new celebration, this time of one of my first favourites among filmmakers, Peter Weir. I mean first in the sense that when I came of age as a film enthusiast Weir was one of the first I liked for his body of work. The thing about Weir also is that I discovered him on my own. Other first favourites such as Hitchcock, Ford and Kurosawa were not people I had to discover, they were

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-9734382204669159582011-10-07T00:44:00.000+01:002011-10-08T11:41:04.768+01:00

Since it is Carole Lombard's birthday I'll take the opportunity to post some clips. She was one of the greatest of comediennes, even though she could do drama as well. She had a very interesting voice, and a slightly otherworldly allure. She was made for screwball comedy, perhaps because she was a bit of a screwball herself. It is a sad thing that she died as young as 33 (in a plane crash in the

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-52166057505096888482011-09-29T23:37:00.002+01:002011-09-29T23:50:17.121+01:00

One of the advantages of having your own blog is that you are free to write exactly what you want. At the moment I'm thinking about national cinema and its more recent cousin, transnational cinema (no, I don't understand what it means either) and my own contribution, a-national cinema. But that is all work-related, even though I will soon post something about that. But today I will be posting

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-66428010146170547942011-09-23T00:13:00.000+01:002011-09-23T01:05:13.682+01:00

I think that despite a century of practice we still get confused with discussing books and films, and comparing them, and in this post I've pointed out of some of that confusion. The first question might be what an adaptation is. You could perhaps say that all films are adaptations of the scripts they are based on, but let's for now concern ourselves only with films that are adaptations of books

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-43659348741657409422011-09-14T21:49:00.000+01:002011-09-14T21:49:09.321+01:00

The autumn semester has begun (or will soon begin, depending on where you are in the world) so this might be a good opportunity to suggest some film books that are well worth reading, and even to own, for students as well as anybody else. The five books I've chosen today are in different ways introductory overviews of cinema, history as well as theory, but they're more than that. They are

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-77204739662299429062011-09-12T22:36:00.000+01:002011-09-13T17:52:02.674+01:00

You seldom hear somebody say about a film that it is "really" a musical (unless that person is insightfully talking about Powell & Pressburger's The Elusive Pimpernel (1950, aka The Fighting Pimpernel)), or that something is "really" an action film. But it is often said that a particular film is "really" a western. What they mean when they say that is that a film which is not set in the American

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-84103254556035870382011-09-04T19:40:00.000+01:002011-09-04T19:40:09.656+01:00

I've written short stories, poems, a theatre play and I've been working on film scripts, not least together with Lisa James Larsson, so I know that scripts are important and meaningful. But I'm still sceptical about the primacy often given to the script. It is sometimes said, not least by writers, that it is impossible to make a good film without a good script, but I'd like to challenge that.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-15654091864210143442011-08-30T22:21:00.004+01:002011-08-30T22:42:04.868+01:00

It just occurred to me that in my essay on Henry Hathaway I had almost completely forgotten to mention the actors and actresses Hathaway worked with, or the writers. Even though I regard him as primarily a visual artist, and that the importance of his films lies in the images, I shouldn't neglect the rest. He was for example particularly fond of the writer Grover Jones who, among others, wrote

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-33378151807724257382011-08-28T09:38:00.003+01:002011-08-30T22:43:29.558+01:00

There is a certain snobbishness in some auteurial circles, where certain directors are almost by default deemed unworthy, and there is also a tendency among the rank and file to consider Andrew Sarris's rankings in American Cinema: Directors and Directions as gospel. This can lead to unfair dismissals of highly competent and interesting filmmakers, dismissals that are doubly unfair when they are

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-27739778464737078262011-08-20T17:53:00.006+01:002011-08-20T18:08:54.628+01:00

Once upon a time there was a cinema called Fågel Blå (the blue bird) in Stockholm, and it was one of my favourites. One thing they had was some Polish movie posters, including one for Bo Widerberg's first film The Pram (Barnvagnen 1963). Since then I've been a big fan of East European posters, and not least the Polish ones. The thing is that they're specially made by artists, who often with

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-70050301960752390442011-08-14T19:25:00.000+01:002011-08-14T19:51:22.554+01:00

The previous post about Wendy Hiller included Graduating Class, an episode from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and I thought I continue with some more episodes, some better ones, from it. Alfred Hitchcock Presents was first broadcast on CBS in 1955 and ran until 1962, in total 270 episodes, each 25 minutes long. They were dark stories with a twist at the end, and that twist was often the point of

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-35770591342649866042011-08-07T10:05:00.001+01:002011-08-07T10:22:05.682+01:00

Wendy Hiller is without a doubt one of my favourite actresses, wonderful and wondrous, with a unique voice and a strong presence. She was witty and warm, a combination of sternness and naivety, or pretended naivety. From Eliza in Pygmalion (1938) to The Countess Alice (1993), when she was 81 years old, she own the screen (despite few leading roles) and perhaps no more so than in Powell and

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-51854256674327991352011-07-28T14:28:00.003+01:002011-07-28T15:38:22.568+01:00

I love rivers. There's something both calm and mysterious about them, and whenever I see one I want to either dive in to it, or get on a boat to travel upon it. You never know what is behind the next bend.I'm not alone in liking rivers, and here are some great river-related film clips.First out is John Ford's Rio Grande (1950). Here's The Night of the Hunter (1955):Two filmmakers who often use

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-30269201324657702472011-07-11T20:39:00.009+01:002011-07-11T22:04:17.803+01:00

One reason You've Got Mail (1998) is so good is because it works on several levels. It can be enjoyed as a typical romantic comedy.It can be enjoyed as an essential part of Nora Ephron's oeuvre as an auteur. It has got the Ephron-esque combination of quirkiness and melancholia and it is rich with her typical motifs, such as the daily presence of dead loved ones and a strong connection between two

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-48657867621294313402011-06-30T22:39:00.002+01:002011-06-30T23:16:56.403+01:00

Two weeks ago I attended the annual SCSMI (Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image) conference, which was held in Budapest this year. There have been some requests for a report and here, belatedly, are my thoughts.This was my second SCSMI conference, and I had almost as much fun this time as last year in Roanoke, US. The reason it was more fun last year was that we all stayed in the

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-70599998526978080442011-06-12T00:21:00.006+01:002011-06-12T12:06:01.926+01:00

Gunnar Fischer was undoubtedly one of the greatest of Swedish cinematographers and possibly in the world. But now, almost 101 years old, he has joined Bergman on the other side. He and Bergman were a team during the 1950s, and some years before, and you can easily divide Bergman's career into the Fischer phase and the Sven Nykvist phase which followed. Nykvist nowadays gets all the attention, but

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-77046293367578289042011-06-04T23:52:00.000+01:002011-06-05T00:13:20.340+01:00

A friend once said that all men go through a Steve McQueen-phase. If it is just a phase, then that phase has been going on for quite some time for me, and I see no end yet. Even though he may have been a hard and perhaps unpleasant man in private, on screen he was fantastic, steely magnetism. His characters, to a large part consisting of self-sufficient loners who are not afraid of sacrificing

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-61544437126041978112011-05-29T22:23:00.001+01:002011-05-30T00:20:54.127+01:00

In The Maltese Falcon (1941), there's a scene when Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) goes to a hotel room to have a talk with Kasper Gutman, aka the fat man (Sydney Greenstreet). During the meeting Spade gets very angry and starts to shout. Then he leaves the room. But when he's out in the hall, he stops for a moment, and laughs. It's apparent that he wasn't angry at all, it was just a game he was

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-33526224904114339362011-05-24T18:35:00.001+01:002011-06-01T00:25:56.138+01:00

The thing about Vivre sa vie (1962) is that I love it so much, already when I was a teenager and still today. This is partly because Anna Karina is playing the lead, as Nana S. She may be the best thing about Jean-Luc Godard's films (and definitely preferable to his politics). But there's much more than her presence. In keeping with the spirit of the film I'll just make twelve points,:1) the film

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-42220623975245555322011-05-16T00:06:00.003+01:002011-05-16T00:55:15.170+01:00

Some time in the late 1990s I flicked through the two cinema books by Gilles Deleuze, since he had become famous enough to reach my ears. I did however put the books back on their shelf not feeling they were useful for me. Now that I'm in St Andrews I'm reminded of him almost on a daily basis so I might as well write down some thoughts. Although I'm not a Deleuzian we do have some mutual

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-28790030869972812082011-05-10T18:41:00.001+01:002011-05-23T22:36:45.242+01:00

You would have thought perhaps that in this day and age, the prejudices against "classical" Hollywood cinema would have been abolished, and that empty dichotomies between, say, Hollywood cinema and European cinema, or "old school" Hollywood and "modern" cinema or whatever, were no longer used with a straight face. But that's not the case, and persistent perceptions still lingers on. To these

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-9194041689646023612011-05-08T22:17:00.000+01:002011-05-08T23:23:08.535+01:00

Clothes in films can be fascinating, and immensely important. Think of Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) going to a ball in Jezebel (1938), dressed in red when everybody else are dressed in white, as society demands. Or think of the films of Wes Anderson. A couple of years ago I wrote about films, clothes and fashion on my Swedish film blog, and I've been meaning to do the same here, in English.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-29831230721680325022011-04-24T16:34:00.002+01:002011-04-24T18:15:08.415+01:00

In my tutorials I sometimes experiment a bit. I will show a film clip for a set of students, "explaining" it for them before showing it, and then afterwards ask for their take on it. Then I will show the same clip for another set of students, not telling them anything about it in advance, maybe just explain the plot, and then afterwards ask these students for their take on it. The results are

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-47981882935429954682011-04-19T16:39:00.005+01:002011-04-19T17:04:20.685+01:00

Music videos, despite having been a vibrant art form for several decades, have been almost completely absent from my blog and I feel embarrassed. But time to remedy this. Since these are busy days at work I don't have time to write much now, but I will just share the videos that Derek Jarman did with Pet Shop Boys. Pet Shop Boys's music and projects have been more important to me than most

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-6389573425275313652011-04-05T14:34:00.005+01:002011-04-05T17:19:14.631+01:00

One of the most long-lived and prominent of TV-genres is the sitcom. The history of sitcoms go back almost to the beginnings of writings, and was popular on radio before it came to TV. BBC's Pinwright's Progress that came out right after the war, the first episode was shown November 29, 1946, is sometimes called the first sitcom for TV. After that there was no stopping it, especially not after

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-80916427966506215062011-03-25T20:35:00.003Z2011-04-05T17:37:57.142+01:00

(Thanks to Anna-Lisa who inspired me to write this post!)There is no other city, and possibly no other place in the world, I love more than Paris, France. I go there every year, and every time I'm just as enchanted, bewitched, swept off my feet. The reasons for my love are many and complex, and we need not analyse them here. Instead I'll just post a handful of sequences that also are in love with

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-69654125166132021602011-03-23T18:14:00.003Z2011-03-23T18:24:41.223Z

But the next one is probably the best of her films, at least to me, but then I'm a Minnelloholic.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-33628987761598328202011-03-20T22:32:00.004Z2011-05-23T22:37:25.504+01:00

Saul Bass made posters and title sequences and might even have choreographed the shower sequence in Psycho (1960). He probably is most famous for his work together with Hitchcock, but his collaboration with Otto Preminger is equally remarkable. And when Walk on the Wild Side (1962) came out, it was suggested that the only good thing about it was Bass's title sequence. In short, he was a master of

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-63143701735328680962011-03-15T23:16:00.008Z2011-03-16T01:01:06.499Z

Our fear of nuclear power seems to go deep. Or rather, our fear of radiation. It is sometimes irrational, and often based on misconceptions and misunderstandings. But it is there, and even though there has been only one horrible accident, Chernobyl, the fear of another like it is often on people's minds when nuclear power is discussed. The shock of Chernobyl has perhaps forever altered our

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-62386837592175666952011-03-09T16:49:00.005Z2011-03-09T17:19:38.375Z

This is a special moment in TV-history, when James Stewart read a poem about his dog at Johnny Carson's talk show. It's so very moving. Part of that comes from the audience reactions. In the beginning you hear them laugh and applaud, but then they go silent, because the poem changes tone. Allegedly this was one of only three times that Johnny Carson showed any emotions in his show.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-67818830509485441752011-03-06T12:29:00.002Z2011-03-06T13:05:19.026Z

Last week I really wanted to see a film on the big screen, at the cinema. St Andrews has only one cinema, and very few films to choose between, so I settled for No Strings Attached (2011), the romantic comedy with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. I wasn't expecting anything good, and I didn't get anything particular good either. However.Besides me, almost all the others in the audience were

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-23089099706879961612011-03-01T09:32:00.001Z2011-03-01T10:36:25.415Z

In A History of Narrative Film, David A. Cook writes that "On-location shooting, the use of nonprofessional actors, and the improvisation of script, which have all become a part (though not always a large part) of conventional filmmaking today, were techniques almost unknown to the narrative sound film before neorealism." This is hyperbole, both the implication that neorealism was all about this,

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-33398955133009358972011-02-20T12:15:00.000Z2011-02-20T13:22:39.720Z

Of all the many artistic partnerships in film history, the one between John Alton and Anthony Mann must rank among the very best. Anthony Mann is one of the greatest image-maker film history has ever seen, both in depth and in width, and John Alton is one of the greatest cinematographer of all times. Together they made a serious of noirs, and since this is still film noir-week, I'll just share a

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-68347995039379204332011-02-19T13:33:00.001Z2011-02-19T14:41:35.631Z

I was going to write about Max Weber, but then I remembered the blogathon on film noir, so Weber will just have to wait. Since film noir is an old favourite topic of mine, the temptation to write something is overpowering. But have you heard about the blogathon? It has even made it to the editorial pages of the gray lady. The initiative comes from the Film Noir Foundation with the aim of raising

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-48895522799717575532011-02-14T08:04:00.002Z2011-02-14T08:34:18.556Z

In order to appreciate the films of Frank Borzage (pronounced Bore-zay-ghee), you might have to take a leap of faith. A faith in the director's ability to raise the most risible material to the level of the sublime. But also to succumb to the filmmaker's own faith in the power of love to transcend and transgress everything, including poverty, war, tyranny and even death. And such are Frank

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-55522424505904782432011-02-07T20:15:00.000Z2011-02-07T20:31:00.445Z

The above title could be for any number of topics, because the "new-ness" of something (a film, a movement, a genre) is more often than not either exaggerated by critics and historians or invented, because apparently if something isn't new it isn't all that interesting. While at the same time, some things that are new are not understood or appreciated. It's a strange phenomenon. What I wanted to

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-25340198977963761632011-01-31T13:05:00.005Z2011-01-31T13:56:58.587Z

It's often said that Hasse Ekman primarily made comedies, that he made for a relaxing counterpart to the heavy dramas of Ingmar Bergman. And yes, if we're talking about the late 1950s, early 1960s, that is perhaps true. But during his prime, 1943 to 1954, from Changing Trains (Ombyte av tåg) to Gabrielle, he made 23 films, of which only four are regular comedies. And out of the total of 42 films

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-78808458784335503462011-01-23T19:03:00.001Z2011-01-23T19:52:41.955Z

I was very much surprised when I saw The King's Speech last week. Not surprised by the fact that it is immensely popular (both Bagehot in the Economist and Jonathan Freedland at the Guardian provides some cultural and sociological context, as well as critic against, what Bagehot calls, the preposterousness of it), but surprised by how bad it was, and how seldom you see a decent script almost

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-33493701047217151252011-01-16T12:16:00.001Z2011-01-16T13:39:53.903Z

Complaints about how predictable a certain film is must be one of the most common types of complaints, directed against mainstream cinema in particular. Unpredictability is often seen as something good and artistic in itself. Having a twist ending is seen as a proof of hipness. The other week my parents, whom I were visiting, were watching some TV-series, and I saw a couple of minutes towards the

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-87397173571771064052011-01-10T15:42:00.004Z2011-01-23T15:56:47.340Z

There have been many blog posts here about people who have died. It would be a sad thing if this film blog turn into an obituary blog. Now I just got word that Peter Yates has passed away, halfway between 81 and 82 years old. I've long had a thing for him and even though a lot of his films are far from classics, he did every now and then make something extraordinary, and they were often marked by

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-84992671041601398332011-01-03T22:07:00.003Z2011-01-03T22:33:00.432Z

I don't know when I first came across Pete Postlethwaite, but I know that for some fifteen years I've been a fan. And I know the last time I saw him, a week ago as the boss of the Charlestown underworld in The Town (2010), as intense and immensely watchable as ever. He was a ghost, an angel of darkness, in The Usual Suspects (1995), he was a very moving band leader in Brassed Off (1996), a big

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-5562793770090867222011-01-01T22:46:00.000Z2011-01-01T22:53:47.420Z

Is it really accurate to call The Sugarland Express (1974) Spielberg's first film? He had after all directed several films for TV, one of which was so good that it got a theatrical release, Duel (1971). But Pauline Kael certainly considered The Sugarland Express to be his first, and she was very excited about it. In her New Yorker review she called it "one of the most phenomenal debut films in

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-63704423924342283352010-12-28T22:34:00.003Z2010-12-28T23:07:43.361Z

When I was a young boy, Lego was one of my favourite things to play with. Well, not necessarily to play with, but to build with. Once I had built something nice, a car or a house, I would either demolish it and build something new, or, if I was particularly pleased with it, I would put it on display on a shelf. Had I been more precocious I might have called myself a Lego artist...Nowadays Lego is

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-79163189003976546902010-12-19T23:48:00.001Z2010-12-20T01:06:12.207Z

I suppose my first contact with his work was the Bruce Willis/Kim Basinger comedy Blind Date (1987), about, well, a blind date, with Willis taking Basinger to an office party, which eventually leads to general mayhem and humiliation for both of them. I haven't seen it since it came out so whether or not it is any good I can't say, but I remember it vividly, partly because I saw it on several

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-68209119051346425182010-12-19T18:16:00.002Z2010-12-19T18:19:47.004Z

The other week I wrote about Africa and cinema. Here's an article about Nigerian cinema, i.e. Nollywood, and its economic and cultural impact in and on Africa: http://www.economist.com/node/17723124?story_id=17723124

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-74955519747921299272010-12-16T18:33:00.003Z2010-12-16T18:40:52.997Z

Just got the news that Blake Edwards has died. He did some great films, and some less good films which still had amazing scenes in them. He combined slapstick with detachment, sometimes being vulgar, sometimes being sad. As I have written before, Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) is probably my favourite, because it has all of the things that made him great. I also have a few films left to discover,

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-8390165977262886932010-12-12T23:43:00.004Z2010-12-13T01:11:21.788Z

Since I have worked in an archive (the Ingmar Bergman Archives), it shouldn't come as a surprise that I feel very strongly about them. Many are badly looked after, and the space in which the material is being kept is not always suitable. But they should be nursed tenderly, because there are real treasures out there, waiting to be discovered.Archival research hasn't always been considered really

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-34832359233603905442010-12-05T22:30:00.002Z2010-12-06T00:43:49.153Z

Meet Me in St Louis (1944) is in many ways a fantastic film. It's perfectly structured, wonderfully acted, has excellent music numbers, and, above all, the cinematography and the compositions are breathtaking and exhilarating. It's an early Vincente Minnelli, and the cinematographer is George Folsey, and even though it isn't Minnelli's best, it's still a prime example of what he does so

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-73863325051896068002010-11-28T23:21:00.003Z2010-11-29T00:28:16.926Z

What do we mean when we talk about African cinema? Well, once upon a time it was perhaps something like this:What's interesting about the trailer, apart from the weird tone of voice of the narrator, is that the selling point is Africa, with its animal and its people. The actors are mentioned more in passing, and even though the director is as famous as John Ford his name is not mentioned. But the

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-50840429970323187992010-11-21T21:12:00.002Z2010-11-21T22:39:31.144Z

I saw a documentary once about amateur Iranian filmmakers, and at one point somebody said that what he wanted was to make films like John Ford. At a film festival in São Paulo I once met a young filmmaker from Argentina whose great idol was John Ford. Once in Canterbury I met an undergraduate who was studying film history and she complained about the fact that today there was no longer any art in

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-46372197798072925742010-11-14T22:18:00.005Z2010-11-14T23:41:56.419Z

The other day I saw The People vs. George Lucas (2010), a both exceptionally conventional and unusual documentary. It's a film about George Lucas, Star Wars and the Star Wars franchise, but told through the perspective of the audience, or rather, the obsessed fans of the films. The conventional part is that it consists mainly of talking heads, with the filmmakers cutting from one head to another,

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-34260338602527588292010-11-08T23:48:00.001Z2010-11-09T01:43:42.960Z

There has been much work lately and no time to write. But now things are more relaxed and there's more time to communicate.I live in St Andrews, which is a very small place, with a very small cinema, which shows a very small selection of what the world has to offer in terms of films. So I have seen depressingly few new films this year. Since summer I've only seen The Social Network, The Switch,

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-8186984837603658262010-10-24T22:56:00.007+01:002010-10-25T01:46:58.952+01:00

In the Guardian the other day Bidishia wrote an article about women in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. The argument was that Hitchcock was a misogynist, and that women are treated deplorably in his films, while the men are "innocent folks, acting up because they got caught in a tricky situation". Now, there are so many problems with this article it is difficult to know where to begin. But I will

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-14067129372664647472010-10-12T23:33:00.003+01:002010-10-12T23:36:47.441+01:00

Maggie Cheung, Chris Doyle, Wong Kar Wai and Shigeru Umebayashi. This is cinema.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-88363230226155929662010-10-06T23:19:00.006+01:002011-08-21T00:22:39.267+01:00

In About a Boy, Will (in the film played by Hugh Grant) had the good fortune of having a father who wrote a popular Christmas song, and Will has been able to live well ever since on the royalties of that song. Sometimes in the world of film theory, there's occasionally something similar going on. Laura Mulvey wrote the essay Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema, Tom Gunning wrote the essay The

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-20899912582201051372010-09-26T22:06:00.000+01:002010-09-26T22:55:56.712+01:00

In my on-going Raoul Walsh-retrospective I yesterday saw The Big Trail, his epic western from 1930. But what exactly did I see? Well, certainly not all of it. The version I saw was a measly 105 minutes, whereas the 70mm version that was released in 1930 was at least 150 minute long. Why was the version I saw just a condensed version? And is it really accurate to say that "I've seen The Big Trail"

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-59560724577166463602010-09-20T21:19:00.007+01:002010-09-20T22:34:09.759+01:00

I'm back, and eager to get back in the film blogging game. I'll start of easy though. One of the best love scenes I know, and one that is surprisingly erotic, is to be found in The More the Merrier (1943). It's between Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, two of my favourite actors from the 1930s and 1940s, and they play room-mates who are drawn to each other, but she's engaged to another man. The film

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-44565369561874642862010-09-05T23:46:00.003+01:002010-09-05T23:56:35.607+01:00

I'm going travelling and taking a break from the film blog. But not to worry, I'll be back in two weeks and I've got plenty of things to say.Until then, two things to ponder:Most of written film history is just a mythical abstraction.No film is predictable until after you've seen it. ------------------------------------------------------------I googled the word Ponderabilia to see if it existed.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-40418370474935112762010-08-31T23:12:00.005+01:002010-08-31T23:26:49.267+01:00

In 1940 Hasse Ekman made a film called Swing it magistern, together with Schamyl Bauman. Ekman also wrote the lyrics for the songs, the best of which is probably the following:This song became a real classic, and 60 years later Robyn performed it. Here's her take on it:This will not necessarily be a part of my thesis (for newcomers to this blog, the thesis is about Ekman) but it's a good song.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-22695597408948948972010-08-25T22:44:00.006+01:002011-07-09T11:47:27.978+01:00

The other day, as I was writing my regular DVD-column (for the Swedish film magazine Filmrutan), I did some research on the cinematographer Joseph Biroc. As it turned out, he was the link between several films that's been on my mind lately. I knew he shot Emperor of the North Pole (1973), which was my starting point, but as it turned out, he also shot Airplane! which celebrates its 30th birthday

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-71510172387654279192010-08-21T23:11:00.001+01:002010-08-21T23:17:00.474+01:00

At long last Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) is soon available on DVD. At least in Sweden. UK, US and France apparently have to wait a little longer.There's reason to cheer this because during the 1960s in the Czech Republic (which was called Czecoslovakia in those days) and the US in the 1970s and 1980s he was one of the very best of filmmakers. Poignant, funny and serious. I've seen all but

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-44196349622385818012010-08-18T23:37:00.003+01:002010-08-19T00:10:32.671+01:00

I'm intrigued by CSI: Miami (2002 - ). I'm not pretending to be any kind of expert on it, but I've seen episodes here and there, and also of the other two versions, CSI: Las Vegas (2000 - ) and CSI: NY (2004 - ). Why intrigued? Because it's so breathtakingly effortless. There's no acting, there's no writing and there's no direction. It's got the most elementary story possible, and the various

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-25886954394868458012010-08-09T23:34:00.005+01:002010-08-09T23:53:21.435+01:00

I've long been a fan of Patricia Neal (when I wrote a review, over a decade ago, of Cookie's Fortune (1999), it was very much about her and very little about anything else), so the news are sad of course. But according to some press information before she died she said "I've had a lovely time." And so have I, all those hours I've spent watching her doing wonders on the screen.Here's a scene from

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-17814948871575572662010-08-08T21:31:00.007+01:002010-08-09T10:33:35.080+01:00

When I was young I watched conspicuous amounts of TV. It's fair to say my life was organised around my school schedule and the TV schedule. But at some point, in my late teens, I just stopped. My interest in cinema took over, and if I watched anything on TV it was movies. Also I didn't really feel that TV was dignified enough for someone such as myself. Weirdly enough all that changed in the

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-1687245586068799192010-08-02T23:39:00.002+01:002010-08-03T00:48:21.785+01:00

I don't want to get all Harold Bloom on you, but thoughts about canon appears every now and then and I'm fascinated by it. Usually they give birth to fierce discussions, and questions are raised such as, what are they for? who decides what's in them? do we really want this kind of elitism? since there are no objective truths in art, are not canons by definition bad?But a canon, i.e. a selection

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-48167918126874001422010-07-26T10:18:00.002+01:002010-10-07T00:29:04.641+01:00

One of the things I like with the Bourne-series is that it has a wholeness to it, it's a round circle, visually. It begins, in the first film The Bourne Identity (2002), with the body of Jason Bourne floating in water and it ends, in the third film The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), with the body of Jason Bourne floating in water. The first time it signals his appearance, the last time it signals his

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-31750296684213159032010-07-20T21:11:00.002+01:002010-07-20T21:24:00.259+01:00

Should you happen to be in Durban the coming weeks, you'll have ample opportunity to watch five new Swedish films, as well as five of Bergman's most well-known films. It's the 31st Durban International Film Festival which has a special focus on Sweden, and the festival runs from 22 July to 1 August. Beware though that it's not a particularly cheerful selection. Doom and gloom seems to have been

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-42001799063634981512010-07-13T00:46:00.004+01:002010-07-13T01:12:41.771+01:00

One of my favourite scenes from modern cinema is from the film based on Harvey Pekar's comics American Splendor. The film came out in 2003, and Paul Giamatti plays Pekar. Now the real Harvey Pekar has passed away, only yesterday, age 70. He was one of the great names in American comics, and perhaps graphic novels. He was a good friend of Robert Crumb, and this is how Crumb described him to The

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-53165637257414955182010-07-12T10:35:00.003+01:002010-07-12T10:41:35.060+01:00

British Pathé has a web site where you can watch old newsreel footage, some as old as from 1896. I just registered today and one of the first things I found was this delightful piece. I did not know that Hitchcock was also a director of the Los Angeles Zoo.ALFRED HITCHCOCK RECEIVES ZOO GIFTYour browser does not support iframes.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-51110376614542149772010-07-10T09:14:00.004+01:002010-07-10T10:38:01.015+01:00

Ah, the modern age of blogging and social networks. A week ago in an interview with the Times (of London), Woody Allen talked about his life and his career. He also, apparently just in passing, named his six favourite films among his own: Zelig (1984) 7,7The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) 7,5Husbands and Wives (1992) 7,4Bullets Over Broadway (1994) 7,5Match Point (2005) 7,8Vicky Cristina Barcelona (

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-6846534155318742202010-07-05T12:55:00.000+01:002010-07-05T13:11:15.660+01:00

The Makhmalbaf family definitely has cinema in their DNA. Father Mohsen has been a filmmaker since the 1980s, after he sat in prison for sometime for having tried to kill a policeman. His wife Marziyeh Meshkini has made three films, one of which is the extraordinaryThe Day I Became a Woman (Roozi ke zan shodam 2000), and their daughters Samira and Hani has also made several films, Samira's being

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-50189265271743319732010-06-29T23:27:00.007+01:002010-06-30T00:11:42.030+01:00

As a film scholar and film enthusiast I'm sometimes torn. Torn between my love of cinema and my feeling that cinema isn't really that important and that I should devote my time to saving the world or something. This is of course very silly, but what's funny is that it is usually people who are not in cinema that tells me so. People who are studying international relations or medicine or other

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-17256709557493424122010-06-22T11:58:00.002+01:002010-10-26T00:24:27.193+01:00

Most children are being taught in school how to read, and most, at least in the more developed countries learn how to do it. But some are more literate than others, and some are illiterate. Due to such things as genetics, personal problems, bad teaching, some will never learn, or will at best learn to read just a few basic things. But at least it's something that is being taught almost every day

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-91222836482213018492010-06-17T18:21:00.007+01:002010-06-17T22:22:30.900+01:00

So I'm back in Scotland after the conference and the additional visits to Washington and New York. It was most refreshing to get away and exchange ideas with a wide selection of film scholars, and I've now got an idea for a book about cinema. But more on that later.For those of you who don't know what SCSMI stands for, it's the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, which aims to be a

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-78037130433123453252010-06-08T03:19:00.004+01:002010-06-08T03:28:23.633+01:00

I've been to a conference in Roanoke, Virginia, and it's been ever so inspiring. I'm still travelling, but when I come back home I'll write a report.For now, I just want to mention that a "lost" early film by John Ford has been brought to new life at the New Zealand Film Archives, together with a lot of other early films. Here's an article about it in today's New York Times. As my next area of

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-81176814809122160092010-05-29T19:50:00.001+01:002010-05-29T19:52:07.237+01:00

It's a sad thing to say, but Dennis Hopper died this morning. So many great performances, so many great films. Here's one.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-9263644585277604452010-05-27T01:09:00.003+01:002010-05-27T01:23:00.949+01:00

I've written before here about the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, and the fact that he was arrested by the Iranian authorities. Now he seems to have been released, after three months in prison. Here's a link to an article about it in the New York Times. I've actually met Panahi once, a couple of years ago when he was visiting Sweden. He expressed his surprise that anybody in such an exotic

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-28091721314327821032010-05-26T16:20:00.001+01:002010-05-27T00:40:15.785+01:00

I have several friends who are working in films, and one is the immensely talented cinematographer Frida Wendel. She's definitely going places! Here's a music video she has shot:Here's the link to Frida's website.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-2450767980447178982010-05-20T22:55:00.003+01:002010-05-20T23:17:36.365+01:00

It's quite apparent that in Britain the annual Swedish music prize Polar Music Prize doesn't exactly excite the media and the masses.The Polar Music Prize was created in 1989 by the late Sickan Andersson, lyricist and manager of ABBA, and a man with a massive amount of loose cash, to be handed out every year to two music artists who have made significant contributions to the art of music. The

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-63924521918699167882010-05-13T23:03:00.000+01:002010-05-13T23:06:54.124+01:00

Sometimes I'm disappointed in Ridley Scott. There was a time when a new film from him was something that would change the course of cinema, the days of Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and Thelma & Louise (1991). There hasn't been as much of that of late, although Gladiator (2000) is close to being that kind of event. But on the other hand, how much can you really expect, or demand, from one

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-41594770843817082502010-05-11T22:21:00.007+01:002010-05-12T00:26:27.151+01:00

I'm so very pleased and happy about the fact that Little Children, Big Words (Små barn, stora ord) is going to be screened in Cannes this year. It's written and directed by my very special friend Lisa James Larsson, and yes, my name is in the credits as well. So should you be in Cannes, then go and watch it! Here's a link.Or, if Palm Springs is closer, you can see it there, because it will be

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-18118936121925461482010-05-07T23:52:00.003+01:002010-05-08T00:46:18.387+01:00

If you're looking for the most beautiful film ever made, one good place to start looking is La belle noiseuse (1991). It was shot by William Lubtchansky, and it's worth mentioning that because he just passed away recently, two days ago. And La belle noiseuse wasn't the only thing he shot, he's been a major cinematographer in French cinema since the early 1970s. He frequently worked with Jacques

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-14050510588337075472010-05-06T00:08:00.008+01:002010-05-06T00:20:51.931+01:00

As the Swedish film festival in New York is coming to an end, the Filmhouse in Edinburgh is doing a Nordic retrospective now in May, beginning on Saturday, 7 May. Films from Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden, as well as an Italian version of a Norwegian crime novel, are being shown.I haven't seen all the films that are being shown, but among them is a real treat. Bo Widerberg's The Man on the

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-80406516020082262632010-04-30T00:30:00.004+01:002010-04-30T01:24:15.012+01:00

I've had internet problems so therefore I haven't written anything in ten days. But now a technician has sorted it all out and hence I'm back.Japanese cinema is of course acknowledged as being among the world's richest national cinemas, and yet so little of what it has to offer has been made available in the west. Now fortunately more and more of the films made by Mikio Naruse, one of my absolute

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-36284727087660682242010-04-18T23:21:00.003+01:002010-04-18T23:35:53.302+01:00

As some might remember, I wrote a piece on Ray Harryhausen some months ago. Today the grand old man is interviewed in The Daily Telegraph. Here's a link.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-78112221385256549922010-04-14T23:34:00.003+01:002010-04-15T01:13:35.169+01:00

Last year, after we had seen Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (2008), my brother and I debated where it was set, until we came to the conclusion that it had to be Detroit. Why? Because it's the motor capital of the world. No, because it was. There was a time when General Motors was the biggest car company (if not even the biggest industrial company) in the world, and the Big Three (GM, Ford and

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-8338332814415072702010-04-12T23:10:00.000+01:002010-04-12T23:19:45.703+01:00

This article in the latest issue of The Believer starts of very promising, but then it gets tangled up in some annoying musings on Abbas Kiarostami. Annoying because contrary to what is said, Kiarostami isn't only a filmmaker devoted to "mythical and contemplative places". Sometimes he's realistic and political, and besides, how can one not be a political filmmaker. The argument also goes that

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-62440616537568885552010-04-06T21:52:00.002+01:002010-05-06T00:18:21.289+01:00

As already mentioned, there's a Swedish film festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York between April 16 and May 4. As more than 40 films are being shown I thought I give some suggestions on what to focus on for those who hasn't got oodles of time.The films can be divided in to a couple of sub-sections, likePre-talkies: Ingeborg Holm (1913) - The Girl in Tails (Flickan i frack

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-70724403787161910962010-04-05T00:32:00.003+01:002010-04-05T00:57:25.419+01:00

Some day I might write down my own thoughts on the state of film criticism today, but until I do that, here's what A. O. Scott of the New York Times has to say. I rather liked the article.

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-74259953035531453892010-04-01T16:10:00.004+01:002010-04-01T16:25:08.839+01:00

Today the tickets are released for the big retrospective of Swedish cinema from 1913 to 2010 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York. A lot of good stuff will be screened, from the early, great film by Victor Sjöström, Ingeborg Holm (1913) to the equally great Flickan (The Girl 2009). And three films by Hasse Ekman will also be screened, Ombyte av tåg (Changing Trains 1943), Banketten (

Fredrikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com1