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Spirit Level Film are delighted to announce the UK London premiere of The Price of Kings: Yasser Arafat – the first film in the landmark documentary series on leadership, narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. The screening is followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and some very special guests to be announced. In celebration they’ve offered a set […]
Continue ReadingWell no, since you asked. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t deeply flawed. The Oscars are the high watermark of film recognition. The red carpet trampling, lovvie love-a-thon that is the motion picture awards season starts in earnest with the Golden Globes in early January and extravagantly culminates every year in late February with the […]
Continue ReadingDespite the ubiquity of film streaming services available across the Atlantic, that specific market has, up until now, failed to transition successfully over into the UK. For recent years, Amazon.com owned LoveFilm has virtually held a monopoly on the UK rental scene. Despite also maintaining a considerable movie streaming presence in the US with their […]
Continue ReadingToday Wikipedia along with many, many other websites partook in the ‘blackout’ protests against new internet piracy guidelines and acts being discussed in the American House of Representatives and the Senate. They essentially removed their sites from circulation for a day citing that this could be a regular occurrence under the new proposals. The laws being […]
Continue ReadingAwards. They exist in all aspects of life, from academia to sports. And films are no exception. We’re deep into awards season now, and won’t be out of it until March. The awards may be numerous, but one thing is certain: winning one certainly doesn’t hurt your box office receipts. All term we will be […]
Continue ReadingOutside of the critically acclaimed Melancholia I think it’s overwhelmingly safe to say that it’s not been Lars Von Trier’s finest year to date. He’s a possibly racist, possibly suicidal, possibly Nazi sympathising, possibly misogynist past pornographer with a penchant for digging himself into holes so deep that even Richard Madeley can only sit back and watch […]
Continue ReadingWhile 2011 was not short on good films, it has proven to be a year with few awards darlings. Drive is a bit too edgy for conservative voters, films like The Tree of Life and The Help came out way before the winter period (usually considered necessary in order to sustain momentum and secure votes), […]
Continue ReadingJust when Hollywood was rediscovering that elusive thing called originality, Chris Gorak made The Darkest Hour, the box office bomb of 2011. The film follows five young people as they fight off clouds of fairy dust — sorry, aliens — that have come to strip-mine Earth’s conductive minerals. It’s a film that suffers from a […]
Continue ReadingThe Iron Lady is a film that comes pre-loaded with controversy. The Conservative Party in particular has been publicly disapproving of what Margaret Thatcher’s children called ‘a left wing fantasy.’ In truth they have little to worry about. The Iron Lady is a broadly sympathetic examination of Thatcher’s life – indeed its unwillingness to really […]
Continue ReadingThere is a line in Giuseppe de Lampedusa’s The Leopard which sums up the paradox faced by George Valentin’s eponymous artist, a silent film star at the advent of talkies: ‘if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’. Valentin, like Visconti’s fading prince, is a man with everything, yet […]
Continue ReadingThis year sees Hollywood’s first silent film in decades – by Sam Poppleton.
Continue ReadingAlex Lynchehaun finds that perfect gift for your film-loving parents/sibling/friend.
Continue ReadingRoss Jones-Morris looks at this latest adaptation of the great detective – will it pass his inspection?
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