Loomnie

Werner Herzog, whose movie Nosferatu the Vampyre I saw over a long train ride a couple of weeks ago, talks at length about film-making, his new movie Into the Abyss, his hatred of capital punishment (one of the reasons he doesn’t want to apply for American citizenship), and how movies don’t change anything (he says that his movies tell stories, not make arguments; and ideologies and arguments belong in the political space, media, etc., not in movies).

It is hard not to be amused and even impressed by his idiosyncracies – he once ate his shoes after losing a bet, and he claims that the first thing he does when he walks into a room is to size everybody up and assess who of them could milk a cow. According to him, he could tell that Woody Allen couldn’t handle udders.

Well, check out the video above. Worth all the 25 minutes it takes to watch it.

H/T Open Culture

A movie set in Kinshasa, by Congolese director Djo Tunda Wa Munga, Viva Riva last week won the Best Africa Movie at the MTV movies award. I saw an interview with the director on Al Jazeera’s movie programme The Fabulous Picture Show (you should consider watching the programme. It mostly features non-blockbuster European, Middle-Eastern and (sometimes) African movies, and it is available both on Youtube and as a video podcast). The edition in which Djo Tunda Wa Munga appears is below, just forward it to minute 9.40 and you’ll hit the beginning of the interview/screening of the movie.

H/T to Sean Jacobs for the MTV movies award link.

Via Africasacountry

Nicholas Barber at The Economist’s Prospero blog:

No one would begrudge Colin Firth his Best Actor trophy: as well as putting in a tremendous performance in the film, his acceptance speeches are, time and time again, so gracious and fluent that all future nominees should be sent DVDs of them to study. But the choice of Tom Hooper as Best Director over the likes of David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky, when Christopher Nolan wasn’t even nominated, was a sure indication that the Oscars are as fundamentally conservative and sentimental as they always were.

Maybe we shouldn’t expect anything else from an annual backslapping session built around a ridiculous number of advert breaks. But that indie-friendly Best Picture list did make it seem as if the Academy was finally ready to be a bit more daring. The appointment of two such untried and unexpected presenters as Anne Hathaway and James Franco was encouraging, too. As Ms Hathaway quipped, “It’s the young and hip Oscars!” Initially it seemed as if she was right.

As it turned out, though, she and Mr Franco were depressingly lacklustre. Ms Hathaway did her best to jolly things along, despite being given precious little help by the ceremony’s writers, but Mr Franco was so under-used that for great stretches of the evening you could forget that he was involved. And he seemed to forget as often as anyone: whenever he was onscreen he looked as if his mind was on which pizza he would order after the show.

In full.

A friend dragged me to a small arthouse cinema last Friday to see Kinshasa Symphony, a documentary about Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste, a Kinshasa-based symphony orchestra. I thought it would be cheesy and all bleeding hearts, but it wasn’t. It shows the passion of some people who love classical music in a country that is not particularly known for it. It also shows some everyday experiences of some of the members of the orchestra. Sometimes the experiences are harsh; at other times they are joyful. It is just what it is – a well-made documentary about some people who go to some length for their passion.

The Trailer:

CLINT EASTWOOD’S “Invictus” has given Morgan Freeman, a 72-year-old ever-rising cinematic star from Memphis, Tennessee, his best chance yet to show what a canny actor he is. The year is 1995, just 14 months after South Africa’s first multiracial elections. Nelson Mandela wants to use the rugby World Cup, for white South Africans the absolute pinnacle of sport, to prevent the veneer of social unity from being rent asunder. Mr Freeman plays Mandela as a man both burdened and blessed by having become a living icon after years of political struggle, many of them spent as the world’s most famous political prisoner. But the newly elected President Mandela is determined to make use of his image rather than letting it use him, and no director could understand this better than Mr Eastwood, who has always kept ahead of his audience by ringing unexpected changes on his own star persona. The confluence of these three wily men—Mr Freeman, Mr Eastwood and Mr Mandela—has given birth to a perfect storm of a character study.

Full review.

If you like movies, or if you are in any way interested in them, you should be listening to Mark Kermode‘s film review on BBC 5 live. Kermode wrote a PhD thesis on horror fiction, and his best movie is The Exorcist. The passion with which he rants about movies he hates is matched by the passion with which he praises movies he likes.

His best movie of 2009? Let the right one in.

The weekly podcast is always available a few minutes after the live broacast every Friday. Click here to go to the podcast subscription page, and I promise you will not regret it.

Here is his Kermode Uncut blog.