It seems as if Italian cinema may face a return to former glory days, with the announcement of the European Film Awards nominees this week. Leading the pack are two Italian films, both nominated for five awards. The first is Il Divo, a biopic of Italian politician Paolo Sorrentino (played by Toni Servillo), dealing with his ties to the Mafia. The other is Gomorra, another film dealing with Italian organised crime, but this time looking at how pervasive the mafia is in the Naples region. Having seen the latter, the disappointing decision to be intentionally cold and unsympathetic of every character leaves me hoping that Il Divo will surprise.
Other multiple nominees include Entre Les Murs, winner of the Cannes Palm D’Or this year, over-rated horror flick The Orphanage, and Hunger, Steve (not THE) McQueen’s directorial debut concerning Irish Republican terrorist Bobby Sands’ hunger strike for his political status. The latter receives a rightful nomination for Michael Fassbinder as Sands, although he may lose out to Toni Servillo. Possibly the most interesting of the films, the animated Waltz with Bashir ,which covers a particular massacre during the Lebanese war, received noms for best film and screenplay.
It’s also good to see Mongol get a nomination int he category it most definitely deserves: cinematography.
The winners will be announced on December 6th, but for the full list of nominees, go here.
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The epic is dead. At least for Hollywood it is. Long gone are the days of The English Patient. If Cold Mountain was a sign of interest wavering, Kingdom of Heaven and Alexander showed that people were getting tired of swords, sandals, and sand. Even the excellent The Assassination of Jesse James, epic at least in its running time and cinematography, was a bit of a box-office disaster. But is there life outside of Hollywood? The glorious trailers of Mongol, the biopic of Genghis Khan, suggested that there very well may be, but did the film live up to its expectations?
Genghis Khan was once known as Temudgin, son of a local tribe leader. Khan was brought to a nearby village of his father’s enemies to make piece by having young Temudgin marry one of their daughters. However, Temudgin displays his stubbornness by picking a girl from a nearer village, which results in a rather unhappy fate for the boy’s father and family. Temudgin spends much of his life running from his new enemy, one of his father’s tribesmen Targutai. Temudgin grows up fast when living in a land where Mongols are not living by etiquette, and when his bride is kidnapped, he convinces his blood brother Jamuqa. But differences in attitude causes the two to be split apart, ending in further misery for Temudgin, as he is imprisoned once again, giving him time to decide on his future: to unite the Mongolian tribes and honour the ancient way of living.
This all sounds pretty far from the traditional image we have of Khan: as a barbarian. This Western image is not quite replicated in the East, where Khan is seen as more of a hero, perhaps in a similar light to Alexander the Great. Read the rest of this entry »
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