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Tag: Meredith Taylor

  • Meredith Taylor reviews A Complete Unknown: “one you won’t want to miss”

    Meredith Taylor

     

    Dir: James Mangold | Writers: James Mangold, Jay Cocks | Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Edward Norton, Scoot McNairy, Boyd Holbrook | US Docudrama 141’

     

    New York 1961. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval an enigmatic 19-year-old from Hibbing Missouri arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent destined to change the course of American music, at the same time as the Beatles across the Atlantic in England.

     

    A Complete Unknown is the 13th movie about the American singer Bob Dylan. James Mangold’s docudrama takes its title from a song from the 1965 album ‘Highway 61 Revisited’. It charts Dylan’s meteoric rise to fame embarking on a journey from Minnesota to New York to meet Woody Guthrie and culminating with his ground-breaking 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival when he plugged in an electric guitar to pioneer his transition into rock to the dismay of folk fans. Dylan forges intimate relationships with folk icons of Greenwich Village: Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Johnny Cash who were all pivotal in his future success, along with his manager Albert Grossman (Dan Folger). Taking the city by storm Dylan cuts a swathe through the music scene beating his own path from folk singer to rock star with a controversial performance that reverberates worldwide.

     

    Timothee Chalamet, now a superstar himself, plays Dylan with same gravelly voice and recalcitrant insouciance in an electrifying performance that rocks from the rafters in James Mangold’s docudrama. Chalamet embodies the vulnerability and subversive unruliness of one of music history’s most iconic singer songwriters, still rocking at 83 and in the midst of his three-year world tour.

    According to sources, Dylan was ‘hands-on with the script’ for this rousing epic, and even has an executive producer credit. Edward Norton plays Pete Seeger with empathetic confidence while pioneering his own music as an instrument for social change. Elle Fanning shimmers as Dylan’s stable rock Sylvie Russo (real name Rotolo), a poignant and thoughtful first lover who knows, as a fellow artist, only too well when her time has come to bow out of his life. Monica Barbaro, sparkles as the sultry storied folk singer with an impressive vocal delivery as Joan Baez who shared a tempestuous relationship with Dylan, but also enabled his path to stardom by covering his breakout songs. Boyd Holbrook stirs it all up as Johnny Cash with his assured pizzazz and dashing guitar numbers he believed in Dylan and supported his vision. Mangold’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line won an Oscar. There’s humour too: one scene pictures Dylan and his manager in bed together. This is a film that never takes itself too seriously and one you won’t want to miss, fan or no fan, picturing a celebrated cultural decade, and a living legend with over 40 recorded albums to his 60 year career, and still counting.

     

    In an interview in ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine James Mangold describes his film as ‘more of an ensemble piece rather than only about Dylan’ who granted the director music rights for his film whose focus is “a very specific moment” in time. Mangold and his co-writer Jay Cocks capture the zeitgeist of a memorable time of flux when significant events coalesce and become seared to the collective consciousness: JFK’s 1963 shooting; the Civil Rights Act, and footage of CBSNews Anchorman Walter Cronkite reporting on the Cuban Missile Crisis as it breaks on Bob’s TV while the singer crafts his own musical bombshell.

     

    Chalamet, Norton, Barbaro, Holbrook and others sang every song live on set and their performances were extensively used in the final film. Chalamet remained strictly in character during filming, insisting on being referred to as “Bob Dylan” throughout, and learned to play over 30 Bob Dylan songs fluently. Norton and Barbaro trained for many months to learn the banjo and guitar for the film.

     

    The film opens in the UK on 17th January 2025

     

    Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdV-Cs5o8mc&t=3s

     

     

  • Meredith Taylor reviews E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea

    Meredith Taylor

    Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was a creative genius and the first woman to conquer the world of architecture at a time when men controlled it all. This new film reflects on Gray’s impressive career and her stunning modernist house on the Cote d’Azur and will appeal to cineastes and lovers of art and design alike.

    Unfolding as a stylish hybrid documentary E.1027 is a filmic journey into the emotional world of Eileen Gray, who was born into a large family in County Wexford, Ireland before moving to London where, after being presented as a debutante, she studied Fine Arts at the Slade and was later drawn to furniture design and architecture although her career languished in the shadows at a time when the profession was dominated by men.

    In the 1920s women architects found themselves confined to designing interiors and Gray broke the mould by moving to the South of France where she found a plot of land on the water’s edge in Roquebrune – Cap Martin and fulfilled her dream of having a modernist house on the Riviera.  A self-confessed bi-sexual she lived there with her younger lover, the editor-in-chief of the journal ‘Architecture Vivante’ Jean Badovici. The two crossed paths with fellow architect Le Corbusier who comes off the worse for wear in Swiss filmmaker Beatrice Minger’s take of events. He is seen an arrogant and rather self-regarding character who muscles into Gray’s world by decorating E.1027 with his own murals.

    Eileen Grey – the house at Roquebrune – Cap St Martin

    Minger’s film takes us into Gray’s inner circle, a tightly knit coterie of designers that included Fernand Lager, Corbusier and his wife Yvonne. Early on Gray in the film counteracts Corbusier’s theory that a house is ‘a machine for living’  considering it more spiritual than that: ‘A place you surrender to, that swallows you up. A place you belong to”.

    Gray and Jean Badovici dedicated themselves to building the E.1027 in the Roquebrune-Cap-Martin location between Monaco and Menton in 1925. Due to its rocky, cliff-hanging location, wheelbarrows had to be used to transport materials on site. Gray named the house: E for Eileen 10 for John Badovici but their idyll came to a close two years later when Gray sensed the winds of change: “I like doing things but I don’t like possessing them”. She had already bought another plot of land inland and her attention moved on to design a place in this  even more remote location.

    The film then broadens its focus onto ‘Bado’ and Corbusier’s relationship, with the French architect claiming Gray’s scheme for the house was copied from his own pen design. Marking the territory he built his own wooden Cabanon alongside a little bistro near to E.1027. But the Second World War put an end to the rivalry when the German Nazi soldiers occupied the Roquebrune house riddling the walls with bullets.

    In the title role Natalie Radmall-Quirke smokes her way through this intimate portrait of the artist who appears both a victim of her deep emotions and the driving  force behind her lover Badovici – in one scene a graceful dance is testament to their feelings for each other. After leaving the house Gray was forced to contend with Corbusier’s arrogance, although he appears to redeem himself by trying to find a buyer for the Roquebrune house, eventually it was sold to Swiss artist Marie Louise Shelbert who misguidedly thought Corbusier was the architect. Gray organised a funeral for Badovici but no one came.

    Family money and her strong work ethic clearly allowed Gray to remain financially independent all through her life although there is never any mention of commissions outside her own designs: many of her schemes never left the drawing board until later recognition, and although her furniture now sells for astronomical prices: her chrome Adjustable Table. E.1027 is one of the flagships of modern classics in furniture history (www.smow.fr/eileen-gray/adjustable-table-e-1027.html )The famous house had a less illustrious ending. In a final interview Gray finally appears in her nineties, emerging as an appealingly decent woman without a shred of ego.

     

    E1027 – Murals by Corbusier

     

    EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA which will celebrate its world premiere at CPH:DOX 2024 (March 13-24, 2024) in Copenhagen as part of the INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION programme.

     

  • Meredith Taylor reviews Klimt and the Kiss

    Meredith Taylor

     

    Dir: Ali Ray | UK Doc

     

    “To every age its art, to every art its freedom” Vienna Secession.

     

    The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is one of the most recognised and reproduced paintings in the world and its reproduction posters adorn student bedroom walls from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

    Yet this new documentary urges us to look beyond Klimt’s often decorative style at the extraordinary motivations of the celebrated Austro-Hungarian genius whose sensual Art Nouveau creations blend ancient myths with modern eclecticism, and are more valuable today that ever before fetching top prices at international auctions. Klimt’s final painting Lady with a Fan (1918) was sold in June 2023 for £85.3 million, the highest price artwork ever sold at auction in Europe, (according to BBC News).

    Klimt was one of the pioneers the ‘Jugendstil’ movement known in Vienna as the ‘secessionists’ who joined a pan-European trend of breaking away and rejecting the old school along with the British Arts and Crafts and Impressionism movements in France.

    Gustav Klimt’s 19th century Vienna was a time of conflicted sexuality: in society women were corseted and buttoned up but Klimt’s louche feminine depictions are bursting with a feral sensuality that conveys women’s true nature focusing on love, desire and the cycle of life from birth to death. In his private life, Klimt clearly loved and appreciated women and often slept with his models who hung around his studio, often naked, waiting for a chance to be depicted in his iconic images, reflecting an era that was deeply misogynist.

    Meanwhile his elegant portraits of wealthy society hostesses such as Adele Bloch-Bauer and Sonia Knips provided the bread and butter for his lush artistic endeavours that include prints, murals and objets d’art, often elaborated with gold leaf, silver, gilt stucco and mother of pearl. There were also symbolist paintings: Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Pallas Athene, nymphs, water serpents and mermaids. His work also included landscapes and murals such as the famous Beethoven Frieze that adorns Vienna’s Secession Building.

     

    Women also featured heavily in his private life. The artist lived with his mother and sisters and although he never married, his long term partner, the Austrian fashion couturier and businesswoman Emilie Louise Floge, whom he also painted in 1902, shared his artistic vision and dressed in her own loosely-designed feminine creations.

    Klimt developed an ornate often dreamlike style and made use of different mediums to express human truths rooted in nature, flowers and the surreal, but his sketching technique was also superb and rivals that of Picasso in its simple yet sensual marks. The impact of grief, madness, love and death on the female body provided a rich source material and formed the basis of his avantgarde work.

    Filmmaker Ali Ray makes liberal use of interviews with specialists and art curators to flesh out her latest biopic for Exhibition on Film that follows on from her previous documentaries on Frida Kahlo and Mary Cassatt, the American impressionist painter (2023).

  • Premiere Affaire: a film which shows there are no easy answers when embarking on a legal career

    Meredith Taylor

     

    A young woman discovers the real world in this erotic legal procedural from French director Victoria Musiedlak.

    Premiere Affaire is one of the juiciest films to hit the Piazza Grande at this year’s Locarno’s 76th edition.

    Sex is variably at centre of any drama where the French are involved and Premiere Affaire has a clever title that cuts both ways: as a first love affair and a debut criminal case in the life of budding lawyer Nora, a mesmerising Noée Abita, who soon discovers that life is not as simple as it first appears. And Musiedlak, in her first feature, doesn’t give her main character a smooth ride in this classically styled ‘school of hard knocks’ outing.

    Fresh out of law school, naive Nora, 26, is working in the Paris cabinet of a suave but sharp as nails commercial advocate when she opts to take on a pro-bono style criminal case, that of a gauche young man Jordan Blesy (Alexis Neises) accused of murdering his sister’s friend. Here, she will learn her first lesson: being a legal practitioner is not about championing right or wrong, but applying the Law in the context of the client’s plea.

    The second lesson here is not to get emotionally involved with your client or your colleagues, for that matter. And Nora makes a faux pas on both accounts. She desperately believes Jordan to be innocent and brings her own feelings into the case instead of remaining detached. She also fails on the second count when she meets the police officer assigned to the case, Alexis (Danielsen Lie). The two eye each other up warily during the police procedural client examination where sparks fly. But while gamine and vulnerable, Nora is not one to be trifled with.

    A feisty onscreen chemistry between Anita and Danielson Lie give these scenes a raunchy, provocative kick. Nora also discusses Jordan’s case privately with Alexis contrary to their professional remit, accepting an ill-considered ride in Alexis’ car which will invariably bring them closer. All credit to Musiedlak puts the accent on flirtation in the subsequent love scenes making them intense and titillating rather than uncomfortable to watch.

    Clearly this is a story fraught with ethical and moral issues – not to mention racial tensions: Nora is of Maghrebi heritage and her mother is sceptical of her daughter’s career, encouraging her to settle down and marry. This family stress piles on the pressure for the young lawyer, adding negative undertones to her domestic life. At work too Nora is struggling to cope, burning the candle at both ends in taking on a case that runs contrary to her official remit in the commercial cabinet, so there’s never a dull moment, and certainly no easy answers when embarking on a legal career.

     

    LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL | PIAZZA GRANDE 2023 |

    Dir/Wri: Victoria Musiedlak | Cast: Noée Abita, Anders Danielsen Lie, Alexis Neises, François Morel, Saadia Bentaïeb | France, Drama

  • Meredith Taylor on Oppenheimer: “a fraught epic”

    Meredith Taylor

    At a time when the world has been holding its breath over the escalation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, a haunting vision of the future hangs over this fraught epic about the man who invented the iconic bomb that ended World War II.

    English director Christopher Nolan frames his feature through a stimulating Washington based court investigation as Oppenheimer’s florid life and times flash back urgently forward to a needling score – from Cambridge to Leiden and then California and finally Los Alamos in New Mexico – providing thrilling social and political insight into the final stages of the Second World War.

    Cillian Murphy is screen dynamite as Robert Oppenheimer, a Jewish scientist from New York, who was seen as a hero to many but later vilified as a threat to his country for questioning America’s arms race bravado with his learned opinions in those turbulent times. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, Murphy leads a cast who each pull their weight in this mighty masterpiece that mesmerises for over three hours, the final segment is the most riveting and allows the stern but softly spoken Murphy to expose the soulful side of this conflicted but brilliant man.

    Hoyte van Hotel’s coruscating cinematography is impeccable in vivid colour and black and white, the 15/70mm print showcasing Nolan’s most impressive film to date.

    Oppenheimer serves both as a densely plotted character study and a simmering slice of history that also delves into the brutal tactics of the McCarthy era, but never at the expense of some dry humour and a wise perceptive overview from Tom Conti’s ageing Albert Einstein as the father of scientific breakthroughs. Meanwhile in the Los Alamos labs a selection of topflight theoreticians cut through the science by simply dropping marbles into jars to illustrate the difference between uranium and plutonium as fusion bomb components.

    Performance-wise Downey is outstanding as Strauss, a major player in the Atomic Energy Commission and a monstrous ego; Matt Damon is masterful as Major Leslie Groves, in charge of security at the Manhattan Project; Emily Blunt (a steely Kitty) and Florence Pugh (a sensuous Tetlock) play the feisty women in Oppenheimer’s life and Jason Clarke’s Roger Robb (Special Council to the AEC) could put any cross-examiner in the shade. Gary Oldman gets a surprisingly powerful cameo as President Truman “people will remember who dropped the bomb, not who built it”.

    Director/Writer: Christopher Nolan | Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke | 180′

  • Film editor Meredith Taylor on Dan Rather

    Meredith Taylor 

    The draw of a career in broadcasting necessitates watching this new documentary which offers a straightforward snapshot of Texan journalist, news anchor and commentator Dan Rather who became a revered household name with his spirited and engaging presence on American TV networks during the turbulent years of the 1960’s and beyond.

    Daniel Irvin Rather (1931-) has covered virtually every major event in the world for the past 60 years but is also known for ushering in the era of fake news that led to his downfall at the respected CBS network. Rather is also credited at being the first journalist to announce the news of John F Kennedy’s death in 1963 by running with the rumour, ‘based on his instincts’ before it was fully confirmed.

    Amongst many other achievements Rather stood out with his impactful style of reporting that bridged the gap between what was really happening on the ground during the Vietnam war, and the sentiment presented back home. The film outlines his fall from grace for airing documents, during a CBS broadcast in the run up to the 2004 presidential election, suggesting that George W Bush had a sketchy military record during the 1970s. The issue is still mired in controversy to this day.

    Coming across as a serious man of integrity as he faces the camera, at 91,  an engaging raconteur without guile or glibness, the film pictures him from all perspectives: dutiful son, dogged marine recruit, devoted husband, deeply religious Texan. And this rounded impression is echoed by his daughter Robin who offers her admiration for a loving father deeply committed to his cause. Talking heads-wise we also hear from Susan Zirinsky, his longtime colleague at CBS News, who sees him from a career angle, and not always in glowing terms.

     

    Brimming with spectacular archive footage, news bulletins and interviews, the film darts around chronologically charting a career that began on Texas radio and graduated to TV News slots, where Rather made a name for himself covering Hurricane Carla, the Civil Rights Movement, the J F Kennedy Assassination, Watergate and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wars in Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan saw him on the battlefield dodging the bullets, and sending serial postcards back home to his family with the simple, repetitive message: “War is Hell”. At CBS on the 60 Minutes programme he was a steady but spirited anchor and is now prolific on Twitter appealing to a younger generation with his recalcitrant outbursts and on his own website News and Guts.

    “Can you still make a difference as a journalist” Rather said at the Texas-based Moody College of Communication in 2009. “Yes, if you don’t quit”. This is a clear-eyed, informative film that refuses to dig the dirt on Dan. That’s for another documentary.

     

    TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL | NEW YORK 7-18 JUNE 2023

    Dir: Frank Marshall | US Doc 96 minutes

  • Film Review: Meredith Taylor on Grand Prix winner The Zone of Interest at the Cannes Film Festival

    Wri/Dir: Jonathan Glazer | Cast: Sandra Huller, Christian Friedel, Ralph Herforth, Max Beck | UK 107′

    Another daring and distinctive outing from the English auteur/commercials director, and his first non-English film, centres on a Nazi family living in an immaculate villa boasting an idyllic flower-filled garden.

    On the other side of the wall smoke rises from the ovens of Auschwitz concentration camp. As birdsong fills the air the camera focuses on the crimson petals of a delicate dahlia while screams of torture ring out in Mica Levi’s chilling score. Beauty and horror shared in one chilling frame.

    Music leads us it to Glazer’s brave and bracingly original fourth feature, a valuable addition to the Holocaust sub-genre. Inspired by the 2014 novel from Martin Amis it takes an another, unique, look at the genocide this time focusing on a dissociative family in total denial of their neighbours. While they briskly build a life with a growing family thousands are losing theirs in the most inhumane way possible next door.

    Immaculately lensed by Lukasz Zal (Cold War), geometric framing and pin-sharp images offer a clinical take on daily life for butch camp commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his priggish wife and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) who spends her days complacently primping her garden: the perfect hausfrau with a heart of stone. Meanwhile Rudolf struts into his tidy living room to discuss the best way to incinerate 700,000 Hungarians with his sturmbannfuhrers.

    An early scene captures an intimate testament of loss and callous gain: Hedwig twirls around in a beautifully fashioned sable coat, just one of the personal items stolen from an Auschwitz victim. In the pocket a rose red lipstick is dabbed on tentatively and then relegated to her dressing table. As Hedwig and her staff gather round the breakfast table silk lingerie possibly still warm from the bodies of its victims is then divided casually amongst the women as their gossip about food and shopping.

    Gradually more sinister elements surface in this Eden which play on our imagination in the same vein at The White Ribbon. A this is very much and interactive experience with its unsettling score that leads us into doom. They are a family going through the motions in their lush riverside setting but clearly all is not well in Paradise.

    Cinema is full of stylish films about the Holocaust: most recently Son of Saul and The Conference. This one focussing on the ’Interessengebiet’ (or area around the Auschwitz camp) is far from ‘gemutlich’ but provides endless food for thought and a tribute to Martin Amis, whose novel provided the source material, and whose death was announced on 19th May 2023, just after the film’s Cannes Film Festival premiere. MT

    CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | 2023

    This article was first published http://Filmuforia.com and is reproduced with their kind permission.

  • Film roundup: Why it’s a good year for female film directors at Cannes

    Meredith Taylor

     

    Talk to any young person seeking a career in the arts, television or film and the creative industries, the one place that they want to attend is the Cannes Film Festival that takes place each year on France’s Cote d’Azur.

    The 76th Festival, 16th – 27th May, is set for a legendary year with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, and an out-of-competition world premiere of Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny from James Mangold.

    Some of the best names in cinema will be crowding the Croisette in May – in fact, it’s hard to think which stars won’t be on the famous Red Carpet for this year’s epic celebration announced by General Delegate Thierry Fremaux.

    The 2023 competition line-up includes new films from Wes Anderson, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Todd Haynes, Nanni Moretti and Aki Kaurismäki. The programme also includes the latest from cinema greats Wim Wenders, Takeshi Kitano, Victor Erice and Catherine Breillat. Seven female directors – one making her feature debut – will compete for the coveted main prize: the Palme d’Or.

    Palme d’Or hopefuls include Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won in 2018 with Shoplifters and is now back in Cannes competition with Monster, and Nanni Moretti with Il Sol Dell’Avvenire after winning the main prize with The Son’s Room in 2001. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, won the Palme in 2014 with Winter Sleep, and comes back with About Dry Grasses, a family story set between Istanbul and small town Anatolia, billed as his most ambitious to date and running at over three hours.

    Wes Anderson’s latest Asteroid City promises to be as quirky as ever and stars Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell and Tilda Swindon. Todd Haynes’ May December features Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore in another emotional rollercoaster. But humour will undoubtedly come from Finland’s Aki Kaurismäki and Dead Leaves, his first film in six years.

    Veteran Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas) makes a reappearance in Cannes with his Japan-set drama Perfect Days, together with a documentary Anselm, a portrait of German painter Anselm Kiefer, one of two films about artists, the second being Martin Provost’s Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe exploring the love story between the renowned French painters Pierre Bonnard and his wife Marthe. With love in the air, one time partners Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche team up again for La Passion de Dodin Bouffant, a 19th century romance between a gourmet and his cook, from Vietnam-born French director Tran Anh Hung.

    Jessica Hausner is one of seven female directors in the main competition this year, with Club Zero. She joins Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, who directs her sister Alba, Josh O’Connor and Isabella Rossellini in La Chimera. French filmmaker Justine Triet will present her thriller Anatomy of a Fall. Catherine Breillat, another seasoned French director, will be there with Last Summer starring Léa Drucker and Olivier Rabourdin; Catherine Corsini with her latest Le Retour ; Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania (The Man Who Sold His Skin) is coming with Four Daughters. A feature debut for Senegalese-French director Ramata-Toulaye Sy with Banel & Adamawill premiere in competition this year.

    It takes a Brazilian/Algerian director (Karim Ainouz) to make a film about Henry the VIII, but forget Hilary Mantel, Firebrand, billed as a ‘history horror story’, has a British writing team behind it: Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth, best known for the BAFTA-winning series Killing Eve. The stars are Alicia Vikander, Eddie Marsan, Jude Law and Simon Russell Beale.

    One of this year’s most anticipated films vying for the Palme d’Or is from English auteur Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under the Skin): The Zone of Interest is an Auschwitz-set love story inspired by a novel of the same name by Martin Amis. British Oscar winner Steve McQueen brings Occupied City, a documentary that looks back at Amsterdam under Nazi-occupation. Also from England comes Molly Manning Walker, a graduate of the NFTS, with her debut feature that goes by the buzzworthy title of How to Have Sex. Let’s just hope that this and all the others live up to expectations.

     

    Meredith Taylor is the film editor at Finito World

     

    Photo caption: Catherine Deneuve, on the set of La Chamade, Cote d’Azur, June 1, 1968. Copyright Jack Garofalo/Paris Match/Scoop