Tag: architect

Exhibition on Screen:
My National Gallery

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 4 June 2024
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My National Gallery
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Director – Phil Grabsky, Ali Ray – 2024 – UK – Cert. U – 98m

*****

Employees, punters and celebrities choose their favourite painting in London’s National Gallery – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, June 4th

There have been documentary films about the UK’s National Gallery before, notably the wonderful, three-hour-long National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014), so, in a way, it’s a brave subject for the Exhibition on Screen people to take on. And yet, as a British production company making movies about art in art galleries, it was inevitable that they would tackle the subject sooner or later. Their version commences with a likeable enough establishing montage of what one might call ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘footfall’ – shots of various National Gallery employees at work opening the door, looking after various aspects of the art housed in the gallery and even putting out tasty-looking croissants in the cafeteria.

There are satisfying little touches throughout. A shot of The Feast Day of Saint Roch, Canaletto, with out of focus people passing in front of it, makes it feel like you’re really there in the scene depicted.

Alan Allison, security officer and gallery assistant (pictured on the front of the trailer, below) wears black clothing with a striking, patterned blue tie.… Read the rest

Tags “the Python foot”, air raid, Ali Ray, animator, architect, aristocracy, art, art galleries, art history, ballet school, behind the scenes, bereavement, British Sign Language, British society, broken string, BSL, Canada House, Canaletto, celeb, children, classical piano concerts, closing announcement, collector, colonial bubble, Crown Estates, Dame Myra Hess, deaf, diplomacy, diversity, Edgar Degas, Exhibition On Screen, fathers and daughters, feminism, film festival, Florence, footfall, Giovanni Bellini, grandad, grandfather, grandma, grandmother, hang, Hetty Feather, horror film, horror movie, Houses of Parliament, Humphrey Jennings, Impressionists, Italy, Jacqueline Wilson, John Nash, Jonathan Conlin, Kenneth Clark, lack of representation, lute, Madonna, Michael Palin, monsters, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, mothers and sons, Narcotics Anonymous, National Gallery, Nelson’s Column, nineteenth century, occult, one-painting show, painter, parents and children, Phil Grabsky, Pierre-August Renoir, Public Record Office, punctuation, pyramid, Royal Academy, safe storage place, science fiction, seventeenth century, Sir George Beaumont, skull, slave trade, Stewart McAllister, Syphilis, Terry Gilliam, the City of London, The Strand, Trafalgar Square, Turner, twentieth century, university, venereal, Venus, Westminster, witchcraft, witches

Animation Features Movies

The Boy And The Heron
(Kimitachi Wa
Do Ikiru Ka,
君たちはど
う生きるか,
lit.
How Do You Live?)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 24 December 2023
No Comments on The Boy And The Heron
(Kimitachi Wa
Do Ikiru Ka,
君たちはど
う生きるか,
lit.
How Do You Live?)
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Director – Hayao Miyazaki – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 124m

*****

During WorldWar Two, a boy bereaved of his mother moves to the countryside with his businessman father where a heron lures him into another dimension to rescue his vanished stepmother – out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 26th

Directors, eh? They make their last film, then, some time later, they go and make another one. The Wind Rises (2013) was supposed to be Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, but three years later, he was working on his next one. And seven years further on, The Boy And The Heron hits cinemas. The Japanese title How Do You Live? comes from a popular children’s novel, a copy of which appears in the film, rather than the film being an adaptation of the novel.

Three years into World War Two, young boy Mahito (Japanese dub: Soma Santoki; English dub: Luca Padovan) loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. Four years into the war, his father (Japanese dub: Takuya Kimura; English dub: Christian Bale) – a businessman who manufactures aircraft cockpits for the war effort – decides to move both his factory and his son out of Tokyo to the countryside where he plans to marry his late wife’s younger sister Natsuko (Japanese dub: Yoshino Kimura; English dub: Gemma Chan).… Read the rest

Tags a world in balance, absent father, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2023-24, Academy Awards 2024, Aimyon, aircraft manufacture, animal, Anjli Mohindra, architect, arms manufacture, arms trade, Art Malik, bereavement, bird, bombing, boy, child’s building blocks, Christian Bale, countryside, Dave Bautista, demons, disappear, escape, factory, fantasy, fathers and sons, fire, floating, Florence Pugh, Gemma Chan, granduncle, grannies, granny, Grey Heron, Hayao Miyazaki, heron, hierarchy, hospital, hospital fire, How Do You Live?, Japan, Japanese home front, Jun Kunimura, Kaoru Kobayashi, Karen Fukuhara, Ko Shibashi, Luca Padovan, maids, Mark Hamill, Masaki Suda, militarism, monster, mothers and sons, old crone, Oscars, Oscars 2023-24, Oscars 2024, other dimension, other world, parakeet, quest, reappear, Robert Pattinson, rural, Sacha Dhawan, servants, Sham Ali, Shohei Hino, Soma Santoki, spirit, spirit beings, Studio Ghibli, Takuya Kimura, Tony Jayawardena, tower, toy building blocks, urban, urban and rural, vanish, warplane, warplane manufacture, Willem Dafoe, workers, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2, Yoshino Kimura

Features Live Action Movies

Breakout Brothers
(To Yuk Hing Dai,
逃獄兄弟)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 10 July 2022
No Comments on Breakout Brothers
(To Yuk Hing Dai,
逃獄兄弟)
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Director – Mak Ho-pong – 2020 – Hong Kong – 12 (Camden Council) – 90m

****

Three prison inmates attempt to escape so that they can attend to various pressing, personal issues– online in the UK as part of Focus Hong Kong 2022 Making Waves from Friday, July 8th to Sunday, July 10^th

The generic side of Hong Kong movies (kung fu, supernatural, swordplay, gangster, horror, comedy) has long been one of the strengths of that territory’s film production. This one has already spawned two sequels (Breakout Brothers 2, 2021 and Breakout Brothers 3, 2022, both Mak Ho-pong). In essence, it’s deceptively simple: three inmates in prison attempt to break out. This is hardly an original concept, however two elements makes it different.

One, it’s conceived and shot as a caper movie. It’s not really a comedy, but it most definitely has a lightweight feel. This is brilliantly established from the get-go with the introduction of the score by Pong Chow and Noel Li, which follows a long tradition of themes in caper movies and TV series typified by Mission: Impossible (composed by Lalo Schifrin, 1966) with its driving yet off-kilter bass-line. In Breakout Brothers, this is accompanied by a striking, graphic,opening title sequence as good as that for Collectors (Park Jung Bae, 2020), the difference here being that Breakout Brothers lives up to the promise of its superlative title sequence whereas Collectors doesn’t.… Read the rest