CinéFemme - Annakarinaland

Jane Birkin is perhaps best known for jumping up and down on David Hemmings bed in Antonioni's Blowup (1966) as a teenage groupie. But when the famous photographer Hemmings plays takes her fawning serious she realizes the game is too rough for her. Later she is to star opposite singer/songwriter Serge Gainbourg in Je t’aime moi non plus (1969) - also a legendary pop hit - and marries him in real life. Jacques Rivette puts her range of acting talents to use in L'Amour Par Terre (1983) opposite Geraldine Chaplin, a three hour spectacle of young actors commisioned to perform theater in the elaborate home of the wealthy Roquemaure. Rolled up shirt sleeves, roomy Manchester slacks and slippers, she exemplifies the finess of androgyny that makes her perfect for roles in films like Kung Fu Master (1987) by Agnès Varda. Now at 60 Birkin has cut a new CD using material from songwriters such as Neil Hannon, The Divine Comedy, The Magic Numbers, Beth Gibbons, and Rufus Wainwright. Fic...

BAFTA's , February 19, 2006 It was a night of surprises, an excellent, gracious and witty host - Stephen Fry who starred in Wilde (1997), as Oscar Wilde. It was also a night to thank George Clooney for stirring up the political volume in film. The highest honor went to producer Lord David Puttnam behind films like The Killing Fields , and Chariots of Fire ,with Ben Cross sitting in the audience. Cross starred opposite Ian Charleson in Chariots of Fire (1981) - a film about "two men chasing dreams of glory" at the 1924 Olympics. Charleson died of AIDS in 1990. Putnam applauded the work of George Clooney for themes that had changed the industry in a year – probably the best accolade of the evening. But above all it was a nite for Brokeback Mountain- -best script, best adapted screenplay , best supporting actor. "Its not a gay cowboy film", quipped the producer of Brokeback Mountain upon receiving the award for best film. "Its a gay shepard film!" Jake G...

Biopic on the late vocalist Dusty Springfield in the works, directed by Ang Lee. Charlize Theron will be cast as Springfield and opposite, as the PR goes, Springfield's lesbian lover Kate Moss. So what does that make Springfield? Remember that T-shirt "I'm not a lesbian but my girlfriend is". Here we go again. Marketing for an Ang Lee film about what it's not about.... Springfield biopic Ang Lee's new film cast

From the beginning Brokeback gained art house cult momentum from its Golden Lion at Venice to its opening in far less theaters than King Kong , but holding its own enough to surpass the Kong box office based on its exhibition availabilities. Now the film has moved into popular culture with auctions, music and advertising--that are not your usual 'tie-ins'. This is an amazing phenomena to witness. I disagree that it has 'perked up' heterosexual interet in gay relationships. It reveals the extent of a covert homosexual culture forced underground for the prejudices and hate crimes depicted in 1960's middle America but are rampant everywhere today. Pop Cult Brokeback Quote: "Brokeback" shirts go for more than $100k The eBay auction of the two shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall in "Brokeback Mountain" closed Sunday afternoon. The winning bid? $101,100.51! The shirts were won by Tom Gregory, who placed the winning bid about 10 minutes bef...

We all knew it was going to win something--visual. Thrilling dinosaur matches with King Kong, giant sucking insects, flying creatures which compel. Otherwise, why do a King Kong film now? The theme of the film, according to scriptwriter Jackson: "beauty destroyed the beast. The day she met him, he was a dead "man", captivated". Doesn't really explain why make a Kong film NOW, though. A white woman esteemed by a gorilla. A white woman in a white dress walking through the streets of New York in 0 degree weather to find her King (Kong). A group of white men, (one) white woman , (one) Asian man and (one) black man on a boat to Skull Island? Spoilers: the black and Asian man die first. Next, a group of spirit possessed black islanders are subdued by the militarism of a ship's primarily white crew and captain? Why now? Why Kong? I do not mean that the film is 'racist'. It skillfully uses race tropes, primarily white and black. By looking at how these trop...

Its a pretty disturbing film when you realize that the character played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman is far from the vampire Truman Capote was in real life. Perry Smith confessed to the murders before he told Capote, unlike the version in the latest theatrical realize. Its doubtful that Truman assisted in stays of execution as the film intimates, but like the film used his money and influence to play with the courts and penal institutions to his whim and fancy. Amazing that a celebrity could have such disregard for human life and buy his way through. He lived a good twenty years after he wrote In Cold Blood and died of alcoholism. From the film its clear that the disease had taken its toll early on. There is something indeed disturbing about the gay and lesbian characters in Capote . For one thing, thing they never have sex. Its the most sexless movie that has ever been made. The director pumps up the eroticism between Perry and Truman, and is content having Truman's boring lover di...

Munich is so incredibly violent that its unbearable to watch. For spice Spielberg throws in a female assassin that is brutally murdered with coolness- simple little bullet holes from a silencer, that are neat and small and then spurt blood, her body left naked. There is seemingly no point at all for this, for the efforts to first conceal her, then not to feel guilt afterwards that her body wasn't covered by the men who executed her. Her crime is punished in a way that in its subtleness is disturbing--she executed for money, not for political motive, which is why her execution is aesthetized in distinctly vivid ways. The execution of "Jeanette"(Marie-Josée Croze) differs from the laid out naked corpse of "Carl"(Ciarán Hinds), in dim hotel light --actually no comparison. The walk on representation of Golda Meir is also shallow and a caricature no doubt because of poor scripting. There is just execution after execution in this film, no analysis of what was going o...

Theories around Why Crash Beat Brokeback --like I said, it was a local thing, and like I said the theme of two closeted gay men in Brokeback was too much for 'liberal', ahem, conservative Hollywood.

More on the hypocrite meter of liberal Hollywood. Gee we feel so sorry for these poor pimps that have it so hard that their woman hatred is the only outlet they have, instead of fighting for real change.... Did it occur to the creators of these lyrics that confronting racism in the USA allows involves confronting sexism? And what about all the lame ass liberals that voted for this while at the same time rewarding CRASH ? Sexual discrimination is at the bottom of racism making the message of Brokeback Mountain far more radical....But this is Hollywood...superficial treatment of "the human condition" at all costs. The songs from CRASH, Transamerica and Hustle and Flow display the intersection of gender and race themes. Next year they will be showing montages of the fact that films about pimps aren't all that rare, now that films about prostitutes have oversaturated the market. But how can you sing against racism and beat on women. Happy International Women's Day! ...

To be sure, CRASH. was the instructive movie. A preachy movie. Ang Lee said he wasn't sure why the Academy didn't like Brokeback Mountain . Probably something home grown from LA was preferable. But certainly homophobia is part of why it wasn't selected. The kind that no one will admit to, just as no one will admit to racism, or sexism. The why do you have to make a big fuss about it kind of homophobia. Why the big deal. See we've dealt with it before. We're all liberal, we work with each other everyday. That kind of 'ism'. The film that had the widest support is bullshit...its who had the most screeners, pushers and preachers. And then in the end, it comes down to your personal belief system. But the truth is most of the films were kind of preachy this year--and everyone was selling messages: this film is about this and that, and, oh by the way I want to thank my grandmother, mother, father etc. for this. Its like that documentary from England where these s...