tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54339435335677265982024-03-13T18:45:56.168+01:00Fredrik on FilmFredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comBlogger510125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-13816516418967757922023-02-03T10:00:00.035+01:002023-09-07T18:05:17.628+02:00The past and the futureI have been blogging about films since Februari 2005 (the first post), first in Swedish and then, after I moved to Scotland in 2009, in English. Blogging obviously suits me. Back when I started, blogging was hot and trendy but at some point it stopped being that. People kept blogging, but it was not necessarily called blogging anymore. People have told me that this is not a blog either, because Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-60965825768434810972023-01-06T10:00:00.004+01:002023-01-06T10:00:00.228+01:00Holidays As usual I am keeping my hands off the blog over the holidays. See you in a couple of weeks.Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-15180113400437745492022-12-09T10:00:00.464+01:002023-09-07T18:06:57.369+02:00Dilys Powell One of my favourite quotes from a film critic is the following:
To explain to a sophisticated taste why The Sun Shines Bright is
so good a film strikes me as nearly impossible. A sophisticated literary
taste, that is. In the cinema sophistication wears strange colours, and
the most austere judge will admire a piece which to a reading man may
appear tearful tosh. Nothing sadder Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-56368098176609509192022-11-11T10:00:00.294+01:002022-11-11T10:00:00.219+01:00Little Vera (1988)Not that long ago, the Ukrainian city of Mariupol had approximately 430 000 inhabitants. That was before Russia began its invasion and initiated its genocidal campaign against Ukraine. (Is it genocide? Some links to discussions below.) Now nobody knows how many people are still left in that city, but because of the Russian method of war, the wholesale destruction of civilian areas and Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-15923748648468036492022-10-14T10:00:00.001+02:002023-09-07T18:08:04.047+02:00Swedish Film Recommendations - Part 1 (1913-1959)Sometimes I get emails from readers asking about recommendations of Swedish films I think they should watch, sometimes I am asked in person. Hence, I thought I could write down some recommendations here on the blog. I will ignore availability for now and just mention films I think should be watched if you can find them. To make it manageable I start now with the period 1913 to 1959, i.e. from theFredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-16479706158129176582022-09-16T10:00:00.459+02:002022-09-16T10:00:00.220+02:00The mysteries of Howard HawksThe headline is probably promising more than this post will deliver because the mysteries are not about Hawks but about two of his films: Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Big Sleep (1946). The mysteries are whether the first one was a box office failure and the other is the question of who killed Sternwood's chauffeur, Owen Taylor.Let me take the second one first. Any writings on The Big Sleep areFredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-58270188778209658662022-08-19T10:00:00.246+02:002022-08-19T10:00:00.228+02:00The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)In 1999, when The Wind Will Carry Us came out, I was writing for an online film journal and I reviewed it for them. I was particularly pleased with that review so it is a great shame that the journal abruptly went out of business and everything on the website was removed, never to be seen again. It was not just my review I felt was good, it seemed to me at the time that there were a lot of Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-30638820522102357002022-07-22T10:00:00.008+02:002022-07-22T10:00:00.248+02:00VacationIt has been a hectic year for me but now I am on my vacation, and I refuse to work. According to the schedule of the blog today there would be a new post, but this is all you are going to get. I see you again in August. Watch some good films until then.Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-19656390324722004602022-06-24T10:00:00.006+02:002022-06-24T20:48:47.484+02:00The Guest Writer #3: Barry Putterman returns - One Has My Name Some years ago I invited guest writers to the blog, and published two pieces, one by Sofia Åkerberg and one by Barry Putterman. Now Barry is back with a new piece, about music, music videos, cartoons, and childhood memories, mixing it all together. Barry, who lives in New York, has previously written the book On Television and Comedy: Essays on Style, Theme, Performer, and Writer (1995), Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-5681701957506142332022-05-27T10:00:00.342+02:002022-05-27T14:02:39.207+02:00Another essay concerning film criticismSince my last post there has been an unexpected development. I have been elected chairman of the Swedish Film Critics' Association. Given this honour, I thought I should write something about my views on criticism, a topic I have addressed before in connection with the publication of A.O. Scott's book Better Living Through Criticism.Criticism of the arts is as old as art itself, and that is proofFredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-54857617354708253662022-04-29T10:00:00.396+02:002022-04-29T10:00:00.219+02:00Wings (1966)In a previous post I briefly mentioned Ukrainian cinema. I had seen very little of it, and knew even less. But I have been educating myself, and I have also watched several films now. The favourite so far is Larisa Shepitko's Wings from 1966. Maya Bulgakova plays Nadezhda Petrukhina, called Nadia, a former fighter pilot who was part of the Soviet air force during World War II, and now she works Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-50920245762328998192022-04-01T10:00:01.088+02:002022-04-01T10:00:00.219+02:00John SturgesAs I have mentioned before, one of the first, or possibly the first, VHS tape I ever bought was Ice Station Zebra (1968), directed by John Sturges. I still have the tape, even though it has been at least 15 years since I had a VHS player. Sturges matters to me. While he was not as important as, for example, Alfred Hitchcock for my developing interest in films, he has always been a presence in a Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-54274948640237666832022-03-04T10:00:00.178+01:002022-03-04T20:11:52.209+01:00Pause in a time of warThe last ten days I have been thinking a lot about Alexander Sokurov's film Alexandra (2007), which I saw at a film festival back then. It is about an old woman, Alexandra, who decides to take a train to Chechnya, where the Russians are at war and her grandson is a soldier. It is a film of great beauty and sadness, and what I remember most is how she befriends a Chechen woman, but even though Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-44994263515036574132022-02-04T10:00:00.297+01:002022-02-04T10:00:00.215+01:00The actors who were called box office poisonWhenever the career of Katharine Hepburn is discussed, it is mentioned that she once upon a time was considered "box office poison" and that The Philadelphia Story (1940) rescued her career, or put it back on track. Sometimes when Marlene Dietrich is discussed, the "box office poison" label is also brought out. What is rarer is for some specification of who called them that, and if the claim was Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-80487939940825882872022-01-07T10:00:00.050+01:002022-01-08T17:45:33.431+01:00A year of interviews - and one with Stig Björkman2021 was a year when I started a new project: doing interviews with film critics. I have done eight so far, seven with Swedish critics past the age of retirement (even though some of them are still working) and one with Nick Pinkerton from the United States. They are all published in Swedish though, either for the Swedish Film Critics Association, of which I am a board member, or in the case of Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-65853724671433897562021-12-10T10:00:00.432+01:002021-12-10T10:00:00.222+01:00The Dark Corner (1946)In an online discussion about Henry Hathaway, on which I held forth, another participant said, somewhat annoyed, "You are not really saying that Hathaway is a better director than Hawks?" (Maybe not those exact words but something like it.) I responded with a "No." because that discussion felt like a distraction at the time. But how does one measure these things? While Howard Hawks made Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-37788745744316602152021-11-12T10:00:00.784+01:002021-11-12T10:00:00.267+01:00Cinema and cognition - our brain as an unreliable narratorOne of the most famous essays in contemporary philosophy is Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat" from 1974. It is about consciousness, what it is and how we can talk about it, and the question of the mind/body dichotomy. He used the example of trying to comprehend what it would be like to be a bat, something that is close to us (bats are also mammals) but at the same time very alien, to Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-72210774958008228742021-10-15T10:00:00.593+02:002021-10-15T13:08:41.108+02:00The Wild Child (1970)In 1964, François Truffaut wrote in a letter to his friend and business partner Helen Scott (who worked at the French Film Office in New York) that he had given the screenwriter Jean Gruault the assignment to prepare a script for a film about Victor of Aveyron. Victor was the famous "wild child" who had been seen in the woods in rural France around 1798/1799, living by himself in the wilderness.Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-76889194928907317212021-09-17T10:00:00.121+02:002021-09-17T10:00:00.207+02:00IntrospectionFor 16 years now I have been writing a regular film blog, first in Swedish (a link to the very first post in 2005) and from 2009 in English. That is a lot of writing. It happens at times that I begin to write a new post and after a while I start to have a nagging feeling of having written about that topic before, so I double-check and yes, I had done so, and now must come up with a new topic. I Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-54145479078748131242021-09-03T10:00:00.109+02:002021-09-04T14:49:21.564+02:00On dealing with box office figures and a list of resourcesThis year I have frequently referred to box office figures on the blog, both old and new ones. The more I have used it though, the more obvious it has been how flawed the concept is, and how undependable the figures are. The website that is most frequently referenced when it comes to Hollywood box office figures seems to be Box Office Mojo (owned by IMDb, which is owned, not unexpectedly, by Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-88667908038073692242021-08-20T10:00:00.111+02:002021-08-20T10:00:00.203+02:00Hell is a City (1960)The British production company Hammer Films is
primarily famous for its series of horror films, beginning in the 1950s and through the 1960s; what might be said to be one of two prevailing trends in British cinema of the
time. The second trend would be kitchen sink realism, the films about "angry
young men" in a working-class environment. But one of the best British
films of that time is a cross Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-633631508120929882021-08-06T10:00:00.004+02:002021-08-06T10:00:00.197+02:00Another summer breakIt has been a hot and busy summer for me but now I shall have some free time again, and especially rewarding is the fact that I am now properly vaccinated with two shots. So no regular post today, the next one will be in two weeks. See you then!Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-6942184425685474102021-07-23T10:00:00.127+02:002021-07-23T10:00:00.213+02:00Jan Troell 90 years todayOne of the most celebrated of Swedish filmmakers is undoubtedly Jan Troell, who today turns 90. He is still active, re-cutting one of his films, Bang! (1977), for a re-release, and participating in exhibitions and retrospectives, at home and abroad, about his work and art. His first feature-length film, after years of making short films, is Here is Your Life/Här har du ditt liv (1966). It is set Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-72100113490584581272021-07-09T10:00:00.219+02:002024-02-22T22:04:13.564+01:001930 to 1945 by the numbers Part V (adaptations or original stories at the box office)One of the more common complaints about contemporary Hollywood is that they have run out of ideas and are only recycling already well-known materials and doing remakes and adaptations. It is not only a common complaint now, but it has almost always been a common complaint. Some claim that this is what ruined Hollywood in the late 1970s, that pre-packaged films based on famous books/comics/shows Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5433943533567726598.post-64728259055889942662021-06-25T10:00:00.006+02:002021-06-25T10:00:00.187+02:00Midsummer It has been two weeks so there should be a new blog post today but since it is midsummer here in Sweden I shall not be providing any groundbreaking historical research, or much else either, this week. You are more likely to find me eating ice cream in the shade of a tree on a suitable square than watching a film. The next, proper, post will be up two weeks from now.Fredrik Gustafssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02648561779489445579noreply@blogger.com