http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/?service=Rss http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/michael-haneke-bleak-house-1816596.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/michael-haneke-bleak-house-1816596.html ]]> <p>For a film director who demands quite so much of his audience, and even more uncompromisingly of himself, it has taken the Austrian director Michael Haneke a long time (20 years to be precise) to gain the Palme d'Or at Cannes, that quintessential approbation of the art-house auteur. But then maybe, like Martin Scorsese's long wait for an Oscar, it isn't so surprising. Haneke is a director who challenges but he does not satisfy; his ever so precisely organised films grip you with their remorseless catalogue of pain only to leave you unrelieved at the end either by resolution or even explanation.</p> Profiles Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/exclusive-trailer-award-winning-japanese-film-lsquodeparturesrsquo-1816167.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/exclusive-trailer-award-winning-japanese-film-lsquodeparturesrsquo-1816167.html ]]> <p> The latest film from acclaimed Japanese director Yojiro Takita beat off stiff competition earlier this year to take the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. </p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:43:55 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-diary-paul-auster-jerry-moffat-punch-magazine-penny-woolcock-1815308.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-diary-paul-auster-jerry-moffat-punch-magazine-penny-woolcock-1815308.html ]]> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/doha-tribeca-film-festival--full-of-eastern-promise-1815508.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/doha-tribeca-film-festival--full-of-eastern-promise-1815508.html ]]> <p>Sir Ben Kingsley is sitting on the terrace of the Al Mourjan Restaurant, looking out over the Arabian Gulf. He goes almost unnoticed at the launch of the inaugural Doha Tribeca Film Festival, as attendees take in the panoramic views of the IM Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art and skyscrapers sitting atop 15 billion barrels of oil. Under the sweltering blue sky, Mira Nair, whose movie Amelia has been chosen to show first among the 31 films scheduled over the next four days, introduces Martin Scorsese, who is in town to support the World Cinema Foundation restoration of Shadi Abdel Salam's 1969 classic The Mummy. </p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/carey-mulligans-in-a-class-of-her-own-1815518.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/carey-mulligans-in-a-class-of-her-own-1815518.html ]]> <p>Just under a year ago, Carey Mulligan was sleeping quite soundly at night. Then she found out An Education was going to play at the Sundance Film Festival. The weight of shouldering her first lead suddenly hit her. "I started freaking out that if everybody hated it, it would be all my fault," she explains. "I had these anxiety dreams – very basic anxiety dreams – where Geoff Gilmore, the [former] director of Sundance put me in a car and made me leave for being disappointing. In Park City, in the main high street, he gets this black car and he's like, 'Get in. You've got to go. Everyone thought it was going to be really good!'"</p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-diy-movie-boom-1815521.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-diy-movie-boom-1815521.html ]]> <p>Amid all the backslapping and self-important speeches, awards ceremonies are always a good place to take stock. In little under a month, the British Independent Film Awards (the Bifas) will take place in London. Last year, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire was announced as the Best British Independent Film there, prefacing its clean sweep at the Golden Globes, Baftas and Oscars. If that was a first for the Bifas – none of the other winners in its 11-year history had ever claimed a Best Picture Oscar before – it certainly showed one thing: that British independent film has the ability to compete with Hollywood. </p> Features Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-salman-khan-amp-asin-1815431.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-salman-khan-amp-asin-1815431.html ]]> <p> After two decades of loving him on screen and most recently, wondering how on Earth his pecs managed to grow so big, it was lovely to finally meet Salman Khan in the flesh! He stars with last week's podcast star, Ajay Devgan in London Dreams (Studio 18) which is out now. </p> Features Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:26:33 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/how-precious-became-hollywoods-next-big-thing-1814201.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/how-precious-became-hollywoods-next-big-thing-1814201.html ]]> <p>Its heroine is a black teenage girl made pregnant by her own father and repeatedly beaten up by her mother. She is illiterate, penniless, HIV-positive, and weighs 350 pounds. Its setting is a tough district of Harlem, and the plot is relentlessly bleak. It barely even manages a happy ending. </p> Features Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/watch-extracts-from-michael-caines-new-film-harry-brown-1813927.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/watch-extracts-from-michael-caines-new-film-harry-brown-1813927.html ]]> <p> Set in modern-day Britain, Harry Brown follows one man’s (played by Sir Michael Caine) journey through a chaotic world where drugs are the currency of the day and guns run the streets. </p> Features Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:28:03 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/scrooge-in-3d-1813577.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/scrooge-in-3d-1813577.html ]]> <p>There are two words Ebenezer Scrooge throws into conversation at the start of every Christmas Carol. The first is "Bah!" The second: "humbug!" Dickens used them, complete with exclamation points, on the first page of his original novella. The film-maker Robert Zemeckis makes us wait no more than a couple of minutes before inserting them into Disney's latest, hi-tech rendering of the classic seasonal parable.</p> Features Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/all-about-steve-trailer-now-available-1813482.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/all-about-steve-trailer-now-available-1813482.html ]]> <p> "The Proposal's" Sandra Bullock, Oscar nominee Thomas Haden Church, and "The Hangover's" Bradley Cooper star in a hilarious tale of a woman who, after falling hard for a guy, thinks they're an item; unfortunately, he thinks she's stalking him! </p> Features Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:51:07 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/holmes-sweet-holmes-literatures-greatest-sleuth-1813057.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/holmes-sweet-holmes-literatures-greatest-sleuth-1813057.html ]]> <p>Along with Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse, he is one of the three best-known personalities on the planet. Orson Welles called him "the world's most famous man who never was", though to millions across the globe he was as real as their family doctor. To a surprising number, he still is. </p> Features Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:33 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/on-the-agenda-were-going-back-in-time-for-a-dalliance-with-dialup-and-an-aled-jonesthemed-christmas-1811024.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/on-the-agenda-were-going-back-in-time-for-a-dalliance-with-dialup-and-an-aled-jonesthemed-christmas-1811024.html ]]> Features Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/women-on-the-verge-why-2009-is-the-year-of-the-female-film-director-1811029.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/women-on-the-verge-why-2009-is-the-year-of-the-female-film-director-1811029.html ]]> <p> Here's a shocking fact: in the 80-year history of the Oscars, only three women have been nominated in the Best Director category. Back in 1977, Lina Wertmüller was the first to be given the nod, for Seven Beauties; then, in 1994, Jane Campion was nominated for The Piano; and in this decade, Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation. None took home the Academy Award. For the Danish film-maker Lone Scherfig, that lack of success is a question of numbers: "Doesn't that just reflect how many films are directed by men?" she asks. "Statistically, it means there's only a small chance that a woman can win an Oscar."</p> Features Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/scare-tactics-the-hammer-horror-film-posters-with-real-bite-1810983.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/scare-tactics-the-hammer-horror-film-posters-with-real-bite-1810983.html ]]> <p>"Tit and fang" is how the poet Philip Larkin summed up Hammer Films' output and, give or take the odd ill-fated deviation from the formula, he wasn't wrong. Cobwebs, coffins, crucifixes, bats, bubbling test tubes, buckets of blood, crumbling castles, barely restrained cleavages: these were the emblems of Hammer horror and, against the odds, they scared the bejesus out of movie-goers in the late Fifties and Sixties.</p> Features Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ten-halloween-flicks-to-watch-this-weekend-1812033.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ten-halloween-flicks-to-watch-this-weekend-1812033.html ]]> <p> Fancy watching something a bit spooky to get you in the mood for Halloween? Here's our pick of ten recently released or revamped horror flicks to whiten those knuckles. </p> <p> <a target="_self" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ten-halloween-flicks-to-watch-this-weekend-1812033.html?action=Popup"><b>Click here or on the image to launch</b></a><b> </b> </p> Features Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:07:49 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/party-of-the-week-glorious-wartime-spirit-hits-soho-1811342.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/party-of-the-week-glorious-wartime-spirit-hits-soho-1811342.html ]]> <p>The Glorious 39 director Stephen Poliakoff and the film's star Romola Garai headed to an intimate private drinks reception at Kettner's in Soho, to celebrate the film's British premiere at the London Film Festival. </p> Features Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ang-lee--beyond-the-mild-side-1811465.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/ang-lee--beyond-the-mild-side-1811465.html ]]> <p>Rather like Bruce Banner, the Marvel Comics character he once wrestled with in Hulk, there lurks an untamed beast inside Ang Lee. But this is no green-skinned creature with anger management problems but an anti-establishment auteur who dabbles in the dark side. You can see flashes of it in some of his films: the partner-swapping scene in Watergate-era drama The Ice Storm, for example, or the so-explicit-surely-its-hardcore sex in Lust, Caution. And now the LSD sequence in Taking Woodstock, Lee's flower-power comedy about the generation-defining festival. </p> Features Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/goblins-a-dentist-and-the-worst-movie-ever-1811355.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/goblins-a-dentist-and-the-worst-movie-ever-1811355.html ]]> <p>On the streets of Alexander City, Alabama, you won't find a single person with a bad word to say about Dr George W Hardy. "He is just the most authentic, alive person", rhapsodises one friend. "He's always smiling and he likes people", adds another. Even his ex-wife struggles to find a flaw in his character. "I can't think of one person who doesn't like George Hardy", she says, a little pensively. "It would be pretty hard not to like George."</p> Features Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/an-exclusive-clip-from-the-keats-biopic-bright-star-1810901.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/an-exclusive-clip-from-the-keats-biopic-bright-star-1810901.html ]]> Features Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:14:44 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/exclusive-footage-from-the-making-of-where-the-wild-things-are-1810291.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/exclusive-footage-from-the-making-of-where-the-wild-things-are-1810291.html ]]> <p> “In terms of musical genre we tried to avoid everything,” explains Carter Burwell the composer responsible for the thudding, crunching, whirring and wonderful score that features in the recent box office smash Where The Wild Things Are. </p> Features Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:01:22 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-akshay-kumar-amp-ajay-devgan-1809732.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-akshay-kumar-amp-ajay-devgan-1809732.html ]]> <p> Hello again - don't worry, I haven't disappeared off the face of the Earth or anything, everyone's allowed to take a couple of days off to celebrate the misery of getting a year older aren't they? </p> Features Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:19:55 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-liman-indiscretion-the-director-who-loves-gossip-1809342.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-liman-indiscretion-the-director-who-loves-gossip-1809342.html ]]> <p>When two major Hollywood studios decided, last week, to stifle their creative staff's love of tweeting and blabbing, did anyone tell Doug Liman? </p> Features Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:26 +0000 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/on-the-agenda-hammer-time-no-not-parachute-pants-but-a-series-of-scary-movies-for-halloween-1807380.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/on-the-agenda-hammer-time-no-not-parachute-pants-but-a-series-of-scary-movies-for-halloween-1807380.html ]]> Features Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/feel-the-force-inside-skywalker-ranch-1808435.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/feel-the-force-inside-skywalker-ranch-1808435.html ]]> <p>It is not every day that you are greeted at the front door by Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, Yoda, RD2 and a platoon of Stormtroopers. But there again, it is not every day that you visit the Skywalker Ranch.</p> Features Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/story-of-the-scene-bullitt-1968-1807209.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/story-of-the-scene-bullitt-1968-1807209.html ]]> <p>Steve McQueen is in his 1968 GT Ford Mustang. The hit men are in their black 1968 Dodge Charger 440 R/T. What follows, through the streets of San Francisco, is the greatest car chase ever filmed.</p> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/stalker-movies--the-genre-that-just-wont-go-away-1807222.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/stalker-movies--the-genre-that-just-wont-go-away-1807222.html ]]> <p>This paltry thing – our lives – he wanted it," the middle-aged heroine (Stockard Channing) observes of the young confidence-trickster (Will Smith) who inveigles his way into her home in the film Six Degrees of Separation (1993). She's a sophisticated New Yorker with a big Manhattan apartment. He is a street hustler who pretends he is movie star Sidney Poitier's son so that he can gatecrash her world. It is the classic set-up in what has become its own mini-genre: the "stalker" movie. </p> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/hilary-swank--theres-something-in-the-air-1807223.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/hilary-swank--theres-something-in-the-air-1807223.html ]]> <p>While I'm waiting in the holding room – PR terminology for the hotel suite where journalists are left to sweat it before an audience with a star – Hilary Swank walks past the open door. Dressed in black jeans, Chanel-branded heels and a red cardigan with navy trim, she beams a smile that would out-dazzle Tom Cruise and waves to nobody in particular, like a politician in election year. "I would say that this is really where my work lies," she later tells me. "Travelling around and talking about the movie and doing press. It's actually harder to do than what I love to do, which is making the film."</p> Features Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/london-film-festival-2009-our-pick-of-the-highlights-1807147.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/london-film-festival-2009-our-pick-of-the-highlights-1807147.html ]]> Features Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:57:23 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/how-to-make-a-movie-for-16345-1806116.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/how-to-make-a-movie-for-16345-1806116.html ]]> <p>On Friday, my zombie movie Colin opens in cinemas. It's been a long journey to the screen which took off when I travelled to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time this year. </p> Features Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/hollywoods-top-tearjerkers-1806156.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/hollywoods-top-tearjerkers-1806156.html ]]> <p>A square-headed man wearing huge glasses marries his childhood sweetheart. The pair renovate their house, and paint the walls of their unborn child's nursery. But the man's wife suffers a miscarriage. The couple manage to put the loss behind them, and grow old together, as devoted to each other as the day they met. We see the man entertaining his wife during her final illness, through an act of child-like playfulness – floating a balloon into her hospital room. A few moments later, we see him in a funeral home, surrounded by flowers</p> Features Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/new-moon-rising-return-of-the-werewolf-1805067.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/new-moon-rising-return-of-the-werewolf-1805067.html ]]> <p>Is the vampire's reign as creature of the night coming to an end? For some time now, bloodsuckers have been hogging the moonlight in everything from the chaste, teen-friendly Twilight to HBO's kinky True Blood, while October alone has given us Park Chan-wook's mad sanguinary love story Thirst, and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant.</p> Features Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/matt-damon-i-have-turned-down-scripts-if-the-violence-is-gratuitous-i-do-believe-it-has-an-effect-on-peoples-behaviour-1803189.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/matt-damon-i-have-turned-down-scripts-if-the-violence-is-gratuitous-i-do-believe-it-has-an-effect-on-peoples-behaviour-1803189.html ]]> <p> Matt Damon is almost visibly shivering. He's turned his mind back to the beginning of the decade, to a time when his career was on the skids. Robert Redford's golfing saga The Legend of Bagger Vance and the Cormac McCarthy adaptation All The Pretty Horses, both of which cast Damon in the lead, had tanked. Holed up in Paris, he was on the fourth round of re-shoots for The Bourne Identity. "All the indicators were that that was going to be a turkey too," he says. Going through his mind was the simple rule of baseball: three strikes and you're out. "Nobody had offered me a job in about nine months." </p> Profiles Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/asterix-and-the-half-century-1804371.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/asterix-and-the-half-century-1804371.html ]]> <p>The year is 50BC and Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely. One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. The year is 2009AD France has been entirely conquered by baseball hats, Big Macs and Hollywood movies. Well, not entirely. One indomitable enclave of French culture still holds out, and even thrives.</p> Features Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/follow-that-cab-to-a-great-movie-1808073.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/follow-that-cab-to-a-great-movie-1808073.html <p> In Ramin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo, which opened at UK cinemas last week, the chief protagonist is a classically effervescent cabbie, and consequently much of the film's key dialogue occurs in his vehicle. These segments form the latest instant of a bulging cinematic canon: the taxi scene. At its best, this can be a sequence as significant as any sex scene or phone call. </p> Features Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:56 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/screen-talk-jessica-alba-to-meet-the-fockers-1803315.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/screen-talk-jessica-alba-to-meet-the-fockers-1803315.html <p> Jessica Alba doesn't do ugly. The actress is in negotiations to join the Ben Stiller-Robert De Niro comedy 'Little Fockers'. </p> Features Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:54 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/naomi-watts-the-first-lady-of-hollywood-1803313.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/naomi-watts-the-first-lady-of-hollywood-1803313.html ]]> <p> When Forbes magazine recently published a list of the most bankable actress in Hollywood, Naomi Watts was the surprising name at the top of the list. </p> Features Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:42 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-gall-of-gallo-talking-to-the-press-is-sort-of-beneath-me-now-1802719.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-gall-of-gallo-talking-to-the-press-is-sort-of-beneath-me-now-1802719.html ]]> <p>To sceptics, there's a mismatch between the attention Vincent Gallo has attracted over the years and his actual achievements. He has directed a couple of films, worked as a character actor in a number of independent movies and released a handful of albums without becoming a major star in any of the fields in which he has been active. However, critics who try to dismiss or cariciature Gallo are frequently wrong-footed by his humour and his flair for philosophical one-liners. He can even occasionally be mildly self-deprecating. </p> Features Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-karan-johar-wake-up-sid-1802034.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-karan-johar-wake-up-sid-1802034.html ]]> <p> Thank you for the brilliant response to <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bollywood-podcast-govinda-do-knot-disturb-1798488.html" target="_blank">Govinda's interview</a> last time out, it's heartening to know so many of you enjoyed it as much as I did doing it! Well, the festival of lights, Diwali finally arrives this weekend and you'll be hearing no less than 3 massive Bollywood interviews this week! </p> Features Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:23:00 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/affairs-and-graces-marina-cicognas-snapshots-1801202.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/affairs-and-graces-marina-cicognas-snapshots-1801202.html ]]> <p> Countess Marina Cicogna, the venerable Italian movie producer whose films include Once Upon A Time In The West and whose grandfather, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, founded the Venice Film Festival, has dusted off some old photographs she took in the Sixties of her glamorous friends. Until recently these images were languishing in drawers and forgotten about in old albums. </p> Features Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/theres-something-about-jennifer-1800602.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/theres-something-about-jennifer-1800602.html ]]> <p> Jennifer Aniston stars as Elinor Dashwood in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility ... no, of course she doesn't. Aniston doesn't do period drama. She is a defiantly modern, all-American actress; a tabloid favourite; one of the faces for L'Oréal and ... wait for it ... the woman who lost Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie. </p> Features Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bfi-london-film-festival-the-capital-projects-a-sharper-festival-1799626.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bfi-london-film-festival-the-capital-projects-a-sharper-festival-1799626.html ]]> <p> The highly anticipated Wes Anderson picture Fantastic Mr Fox is having its world premiere at the London Film Festival. It's a huge coup for the event that one of the most highly anticipated films of the autumn season has chosen to ignore the allure of Venice and Toronto and premiere in the capital. </p> Features Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:18 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/vince-vaughn-the-happiest-swinger--in-town-1799625.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/vince-vaughn-the-happiest-swinger--in-town-1799625.html ]]> <p> Vince Vaughn earned the best possible accolade for an actor this year. He is not the Sexiest Man Alive nor the most nominated for more serious awards, but he is the A-list actor most Hollywood studios are itching to work with by dint of this particular honour. Forty next year, Vaughn is the actor most likely to give investors a rosy return on their money. Not surprisingly, then, his stock is at an all-time high. The fact that he specialises in comedy, in these profoundly non-comedic times, has placed him in even greater demand. </p> Features Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:14 +0100 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/observations-give-the-coraline-puppet-masters-a-hand-1799696.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/observations-give-the-coraline-puppet-masters-a-hand-1799696.html <p>More often than not, when we watch a film, we don't give too much thought to the amount of work involved in putting it together. Which, refreshingly, is something that director Henry Selick decided to fix during trailers for his latest stop-frame animation film, Coraline, which hit our cinema screens earlier this year. To highlight just how meticulous the process can be, he flashed a few facts fleetingly across the screen: thousands of hands for puppets were each made by hand, a forest of cherry blossoms made of popcorn, five miles of gold thread for a five-inch wig and 3,500 flowers that all light up.</p> Features Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:01 +0100