Moreintelligentlife.com is the website of Intelligent Life magazine. Articles about Arts, Lifestyle, Travels, and Ideas

Is Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" still relevant? Ralph Fiennes makes a powerful case. Ian Jack is almost convinced ...  read more »

Nicholas Barber picks his highlight from the next two months at the movies: a gleaming showcase for Felicity Jones ...   read more »

~ Posted by Nicholas Barber, December 20th 2011

Glance at the films being released in Britain in January and early February, or in America in November and December, and you’ll notice a glut of Oscar contenders. You know the type. They’re middle-brow, grown-up dramas, often biopics or literary adaptations, with a sheen of Hollywood gloss over a base of indie intelligence, and with one or two juicy roles played by actors who have already won their share of prizes. If you vote for the Baftas or the Academy Awards, but you can’t decide which movies to support, they’re the films which say: relax, this is what quality cinema looks like. The 2012 crop includes “The Iron Lady”, “Shame”, “Coriolanus”, “J. Edgar”, “The Descendants”, “Carnage”, “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close”, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”, “A Dangerous Method” and “Young Adult”. In Britain, every one of those films comes out in the first six weeks of the year. In America, they’re released about a month earlier, but they’re almost as tightly packed.  read more »

The secret of a great film about a real person is to focus on a short slice of life, says Nicholas Barber ...  read more »

When the HBO docudrama “Too Big to Fail” first aired on American television in May, many critics were willing to extend the project some credit, as it were, for seeking thrills in a situation that Michael Kinsley described as “Too Complicated to Understand”. The film was co-produced by Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times journalist who wrote the 640-page book about the 2008 financial crisis on which it was based (reviewed here), and the result is an altogether faithful condensation of Mr Sorkin’s text, with the occasional license taken for dramatic effect. (A scene with the treasury secretary Hank Paulson, played by a brooding William Hurt, wandering about a nearly empty Times Square at dawn is as visually striking as it is preposterous.) Mr Kinsley gently chided the film for ramping up the excitement—“‘Too Big to Fail’ uses all the familiar ‘Law & Order’ techniques for creating a sense of urgency on the cheap”—but he accepted Mr Sorkin’s version of what happened in 2008, praising the movie for telling the story “with exemplary clarity.” The Economist deemed the film “fast-paced, well-acted and clear,” a lucid portrayal of “the ugly choice between bail-out and total meltdown.”  read more »

Nicholas Barber feels patronised by "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan", a film which mixes 19th-century China with 21st-century issues ...    read more »

Andrea Arnold's "Wuthering Heights" and Cary Fukunaga’s “Jane Eyre” take radically different approaches to classic material ...  read more »

The last time Johnny Depp inhabited the world of Hunter S. Thompson it was as a mescaline-gobbling adrenaline junkie in the 1998 screen adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. Directed by Terry Gilliam, the film swiftly became a cult hit for its cathartic scenes of rampant drug-use, reckless driving and zealous hotel-trashing. It also confirmed Thompson’s place as a countercultural hero, and an eccentric pioneer of so-called “Gonzo” journalism, whereby reporters compromise objectivity for the sake of a good story. The two men became close during the filming, enough for Mr Depp to earn the nickname “Colonel”. After Thompson committed suicide in 2005, Mr Depp took charge of enacting his final wish: to have his ashes blasted from a cannon to the sound of Bob Dylan’s "Mr Tambourine Man".

Given this history, it is surprising that the new film adaptation of "The Rum Diary", starring Mr Depp, should take such liberties with Thompson’s early novel. Written and directed by Bruce Robinson ("Withnail and I"), the film includes two insignificant lines from the book and little else. Mr Robinson concedes as much, explaining it is “for the simple reason that I’m not Hunter S. Thompson.”  read more »

When Marc and Nick Francis came across Chinese workers building a road in the Ethiopian countryside in 2005, they felt like they were seeing the future. China’s footprint on Africa's soil was expanding in front of their eyes.

The film-makers had been interested in China since the 1990s, when Marc lived in Shenzhen. But it wasn’t until they encountered fast-growing Asian investment in Africa that they knew which story they wanted to tell, and how. “When China met Africa” follows three men in Zambia, who help to illustrate the Afro-Cino relationship: the country’s trade minister, Felix Mutati; a Chinese farm-owner; and a project manager for a Chinese multinational. The film explores the daily dependency and friction between them in their jobs.

China has recently become Africa’s largest trading partner, lending more money to the continent than the World Bank, so the film is a timely observation of geo-political change. “China’s foray into Africa is indicative of a wider shift in power from West to East,” says Nick, “and something we all need to try to understand”.

The brothers are drawn to deconstructing big global issues. Their last film, “Black Gold”, which premiered at the Sundance film festival, was about the struggle of one man against the multi-billion dollar coffee industry. It brought the topic to the attention of thousands. “When China met Africa”, now available on DVD, continues to travel on the international festival circuit.

More Intelligent Life  interviewed the brothers over e-mail, and asked them about some of the challenges and revelations involved in making this film.  read more »

Big directors are in a thrall to "performance capture" for animated films. Nicholas Barber laments the way it turns characters into cretins ...  read more »