OFCS members don’t just write film reviews. Here are several articles you might find interesting.
Best of Lists
The top 10 director burns
Interviews
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Frank Swietek @ One Guy’s Opinion
Chris Butler and Sam Fell of “ParaNorman”
- Excerpt: Sam: So we started out, this movie, everyone in boxes and trying to turn them on their heads.; Chris: Yeah, the bully is not really the bully and what you think is scary is not as scary as you think.
Peter Hedges of “The Odd Life of Timothy Green”
- Excerpt: What I always hope is that people will end up talking about their own lives or thinking about their own lives. They think about their kids or their parents. The good news is that everybody’s a kid (or was) and for people that aren’t parents, everybody has parents or had them, so I hope they’ll see themselves up there. For me, the great films or even the good films remind me that time is ticking and that life is fragile and that we’d better get living and be more alive and be more willing to love. Frequently, I go to these movies where I forget about my life, and I escape, and then as I’m leaving I have this feeling, I feel work begin to creep back in and by the time I’m home, I’m thinking about the bills I need to pay and I just had a vacation from my life. There are other times where I have a feeling that I’ve gotten to take a vacation but I also feel like I’ve been nourished or I feel more energized to be better, to be more, to be better, to mean more, to live more fully, and that’s what I’d like people to feel from this movie. Probably the simple version would be, you either go home and you wake-up your kid if they’re a baby and hold them, or you call your mom or your dad and you check-in on them or you squeeze the hand of the person next to you and go for some ice cream and you say nice things to each other, maybe something like that.
Sam Fell and Chris Butler on “ParaNorman”
Frank Swietek @ One Guy’s Opinion
Festivals
Eva Marie Saint at the Plaza Classic Film Festival
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: On black-and-white films: “It’s more honest, it’s more truthful”.
Plaza Classic Film Festival: Manos: The Hands of Fate
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: YES! There WILL be a sequel to Manos: The Hands of Fate!
Plaza Classic Film Festival: Mary Badham
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Mary Badham left us with these final words. “Education is the key to freedom. Ignorance is the root of all evil.”
Plaza Classic Film Festival: On Restoring Manos: The Hands of Fate
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Manos is a lousy film on every level…but despite its myriad of flaws, it is a film that brings pleasure to the viewer.
Plaza Classic Film Festival: Tippi Hedren
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Tippi Hedren’s final comments about The Birds before the film began was that the ending of the film was not the one she liked.
Oscar Coverage
Oscar Preview: Weekend of Aug. 10-12, 2012
- Excerpt: A look at the Oscar chances of The Bourne Legacy and Hope Springs.
Other Articles
The All-Important First Movie
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Last week, I did something I’ve been waiting years to do: I took my son to his first movie.
Box Office Report: ‘Bourne,’ Ferrell and Streep Make for a Good Weekend All Around
Cinema in Noir’s List of Guilty Pleasure Movies
Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk [English]
- Excerpt: We also unveil our favorite guilty pleasure movies. And yes, they are extra guilty with a side of cheese. Step Up anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Ok..
Criticwatch – Peter Travers Is a Worthless Piece of S***
- Excerpt: The ads for The Campaign were littered with a spate of quote whores; the best that a few flights, hotels and buffets that junkets can buy. Shouldn’t be much of a surprise though. That’s the Warner Bros. way.
Rod Steiger Remembered
Betty Jo Tucker @ Movie Addict Headquarters
- Excerpt: Actress Joan Benedict Steiger reminisces about her late husband’s remarkable film career.
The Stars That Never Were: The “Next Big Thing” That Never Quite Happened…
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: I was watching Safe House over the weekend. It was fairly okay, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I was watching Ryan Reynolds headlining a film with Denzel Washington. It was only last year that it seemed Reynolds was being given a massive push by Hollywood. It’s always interesting to look at the actors who received a very substantial push from Hollywood, only to barely miss their shot at legitimate stardom – those actors and actresses heralded as “the next big thing”, seemingly the subject of every talk show and newspaper clipping for the better part of a year, only to fall a little bit short of the mark and to end up fading. It’s a cruel industry, and it is sometimes a little disheartening to see the way that certain performers get swallowed up whole by it.
When Sense of Wonder Meets Senseless Tragedy: Thoughts on the Dark Knight Rises Massacre
Steve Biodrowski @ Cinefantastique Online
- Excerpt: We are stunned by the violence that interrupted THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, because movies represent to many of us an escape from reality. When the ugly outside reality intrudes, it is with the hideous impact of a nightmarish Freddy Kruger disrupting what should have been our communal dreamscape. The luminous glow is extinguished as the crude matter is torn mercilessly asunder. We are left feeling not merely shell-shocked but spiritually diminished. The void opens before us. The Lovecraftian Crawling Chaos threatens to consume our souls. We find cold comfort, if any at all, the the empty-sounding promise that time heals all wounds. With no great faith or insights to offer, it is really only a willful act of refusal on my part that keeps me from surrendering to despair, that keeps my Sense of Wonder alive. “It’s what I choose to believe,” as scientist Elizabeth Shaw says in PROMETHEUS, echoing the faith of her father – a faith that she willfully maintains, in spite of the grizzly events and damning counter-evidence she endures.
