marți, 30 martie 2021

RIP Bertrand Tavernier

Bertrand Tavernier, one of the most ditinguished French filmmakers from the 70's is gone at 79 on March 25th 2021. He shot a film in Romania, Captaine Conan won best director at Cannes for Une dimanche a la campagne and his last work was an exhaustive a documentary about French cinema, Voyage au travers du cinema francais, expandes as a whole series. Filmography highlights: Coup de torchon, 'Round Midnight, La mort en direct, Le juge et l'assasin, L.627, In the Electric Mist. 


Criterion Collection: Tavernier was a man who “embodied the spirit of cinema as robustly as anyone ever has.”

joi, 25 martie 2021

RIP George Segal

Sadly another one of Hollywoodțs greats, George Segal has passed away on March 23d 2021. He was 87. He was Oscar nominated for supporting actor in Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf ? (1966).

War movies (King Rat, The Bridge at Remagen), spy yarns (The Quiller Memorandum), thrillers & heist movies (The Hot Rock, The Terminal Man). Segal was a big star at the end of sixties and in the 70's, then in the 80țs his filmography bgan to fade away.  When I was a kid i saw him in cinema in The Southern Star (Steaua sudului), A Touch of Class, next to Glanda Jackson and Carbon Copy (Copie la indigo), when his son was a very young Denzel Washington. 

Last time I saw him in The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), next to Barbra Streisand, a catch-up classic comedy I saw just last year. 

Uncanny, just last morning I saw an article about the anniversary of California Split (1974),which I'm not sure I have ever seen, the Robertt Altman gambling film with Segal and Elliot Gould.

Segal: "I got along with [Altman] really well... It was like a party. It was so civilized back then. There were no long hours. It was relaxed. That’s why those movies from the ’70s were so good...Those ’70s, what we’re talking about, were transcendent..."



marți, 16 martie 2021

RIP Yaphet Kotto

 Mr. Big is no more ! Or should I say Kananga ? Alonzo Mosely from FBI ? Or Parker from Alien ?

Yaphet Kotto was a versatile actor and one of the proeminent black actors in movies in the 70's, like James Earl Jones and Louis Gossett jr. He was also a star in the Tv series Homicide. He died at 81. 

His breathrough came after his part in Across 110th Street when he was offered the part of the villain of the 1st Roger Moore  James Bond movie, Live and Let Die (1973), Kananga alias Mr. Big. He was also a part of th ensemble of the space crew of Alien (1979) together with brits like Ian Holm and John Hurt.  

For some of us, Alonzo Mosely from FBI, his character from the film Midnight Run(1988) was the closest to the heart.

Article and obituary in The New York Times


“One day, when I was about 16, I walked into this theater showing ‘On the Waterfront’ and I saw Marlon Brando for the first time, I couldn’t speak. It was like somebody had punched me in the stomach. It was like someone had crashed cymbals in both ears. I was blasted out of the theater. I knew from that moment that I wanted to be an actor.”

Yaphet Kotto (1939-2021)

luni, 15 martie 2021

Colectiv-nominalizat la 2 Oscaruri / Collective nominated for 2 Oscars !

Moment istoric ! Finally ! Dupa ce Colectiv a fost nominalizat la BAFTA au venit si nominalizarile la Oscar ! 

Pentru prima data, in 93 de ani de la infiintarea lor, un film romanesc e nominalizat ! Si nu la una ci la doua categorii -Film Strain si Documentar ! 

Bravo si bafta mare !  Good LUCK !

*Toate nominalizarile la Oscar 93 aici !

* cronica mea la Colectiv aici !

*Colectiv se vede in Romania pe HBO si HBO GO. 


Alexander Nanau’s “Collective,” instead, has the rare distinction of scoring Oscar nominations in both the international feature film and documentary feature categories.
                  Variety 

marți, 9 martie 2021

Colectiv nominalizat la BAFTA / Collective nominated at BAFTAs !

Congratulations to all involved ! Colectiv / Collective nominated at the  BAFTA's.

My review here (in Romanian)

Colectiv can be seen in Romania on HBO. 



And a cool conversation between director Alexander Nanau, Joe Berlinger (director of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) and Lars Ulrich (drummer of Metallica)  here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piw-G-tb9L8