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German actress Hanna Schygulla delivered a powerful criticism of nationalism and far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) at the Berlinale today.

“We have to get away from this nationalistic thing,” said Schygulla, speaking at the press conference for Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Competition title Yunan. “It has only brought tears, wars, people being abused. All this shouldn’t be at stake anymore.

“Now we have the worst people in charge of the world. I feel quite impotent,” continued Schygulla, in a speech that lasted around eight minutes. “Everything in life is in movement, so maybe they will move out at some time – I hope.

My grandfather Barrie Ellis-Jones, who has died of cancer aged 84, had a successful career in European film, culminating in becoming executive director of the film funding body Eurimages in 1994.

During his two years there, based in Strasbourg, Eurimages supported 68 feature films, including the prestigious Ulysses’ Gaze, and 19 documentaries. But in 1996 the UK government withdrew its funding and, although not required to, out of principle Barrie resigned and returned to the UK.

When he introduced the world premiere of “The Return” at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday night, director Uberto Pasolini pointed out that nobody has made a film adaptation of Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” since 1955, when Italian director Mario Camerini made a version with Kirk Douglas as Odysseus. He skipped over a couple of other versions as well as works by Theo Angelopoulos and the Coen brothers that borrowed elements from Homer’s tale, but the point remains: One of the first great works of Western literature is not marketable IP these days.

But it’s still a hell of a tale, as “The Return” proves. The film leaves out the first two-thirds of the book, the part that includes the cyclops and the Sirens and the six-headed sea monster and lots of meddling by the gods. Instead, it sticks with the final section in which Odysseus returns...

What’s going on with Terrence Malick’s “The Last Planet” movie about Jesus? Well, not much publicly anyhow. As usual, most of it is under the radar, but a new sign suggests it’s entering the post-production stages and perhaps inching towards completion.

Film Soundtrack Reporter says Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou has written the original score for the upcoming drama. She is known for writing the score to Theodoros Angelopoulos’ 1995 Grand Jury Prize Cannes winner “Ulysses’ Gaze” and some of her existing music was used in both “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and Malick’s own “Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey” (the longer version with Cate Blanchett narration that never came out theatrically beyond film festivals).

Continue reading Mark Rylance Jokes He Did “90 Minute Takes” On Terrence Malick’s ‘Last Planet’ Which Now Has A Composer at The Playlist.

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze (1995) is showing April 27 - May 27 and Landscape in the Mist (1988) is showing April 28 - May 28, 2017 in the United States.Landscape in the Mist“We Greeks are dying people. We've completed our appointed cycle. Three thousand years among broken stones and statues, and now we are dying.”—Taxi driver, Ulysses’ GazeIt seems that no essay on the films of Theodoros Angelopoulos can neglect to mention that, despite being recognized as one of cinema’s masters in Europe, he has repeatedly failed to cross over to the United States. A retrospective at the Museum of the Modern Art in 1990, a Grand Prix at Cannes Ulysses’ Gaze in 1995, a Palme d’Or for Eternity and a Day in 1998, and, most recently, a complete 35mm retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image and Harvard Film Archive...

"Swedish actor Erland Josephson, who collaborated with legendary film director Ingmar Bergman in more than 40 films and plays, has died," reports the AP. He was 88. "Josephson was born in Stockholm in 1923 and met Bergman while training as an amateur actor at 16. He appeared in several Bergman plays and films. He shot to international stardom with the role of Johan in Berman's film Scenes from a Marriage, in 1973. Josephson also starred in Andrey Tarkovskiy's films Nostalghia [1983] and The Sacrifice [1986]."

"It is Josephson's face which makes him so effective on film," reads his entry in the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, "that bearlike aspect, his ability to look lost and forlorn, to convey a sense of suffering and bewilderment, in spite of his bluff exterior. Were one to repeat Kuleshov's famous experiment of the 1920s and to intercut the same shot of Josephson with images of joy, of sadness, of anger,...

The screen icon and two-time Oscar winner heads the list of stars who died this year in the Academy's traditional rememberance

Elizabeth Taylor featured prominently in the In Memoriam section of the Academy Award ceremony currently taking place at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. The Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf actor died in March 2011 aged 79, and was one of the most prominent figures of Hollywood glamour through the 1950s and 60s. She is especially well remembered for her multiple marriages, including two to fellow actor Richard Burton.

Also remembered were actors Jane Russell, best known for starring opposite Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Farley Granger, the star of two Hitchcock masterpieces, Rope and Strangers on a Train; and Michael Gough, the veteran British character actor who had a late flowering as the butler Alfred in the Batman films in the 90s.

Behind the camera, mentions were made of director Sidney Lumet,...

Swedish actor known for his roles in Ingmar Bergman's films and television dramas

Although the actors who comprised Ingmar Bergman's repertory company all went on to make their own prestigious careers, they will for ever be associated with the great Swedish film and stage director. Erland Josephson, who has died aged 88 after suffering from Parkinson's disease, was artistically linked with Bergman even more than Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. Josephson appeared in more than a dozen of Bergman's films, and played a Bergman surrogate in Ullmann's Faithless (2000).

In middle and old age, he was chosen by directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos for the qualities he revealed in the Bergman films – a certain self-centred introspection and a deep melancholy, etched on his lined and grizzled features. Because he became a leading film actor in his 50s, he seems never to have been young.

Film director with a magisterial style who excelled at historical and political allegories

The Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos, who has died aged 76 in a road accident, was an epic poet of the cinema, creating allegories of 20th-century Greek history and politics. He redefined the slow pan, the long take and tracking shots, of which he was a master. His stately, magisterial style and languidly unfolding narratives require some (ultimately rewarding) effort on the part of the spectator. "The sequence shot offers, as far as I'm concerned, much more freedom," Angelopoulos explained. "By refusing to cut in the middle, I invite the spectator to better analyse the image I show him, and to focus, time and again, on the elements that he feels are the most significant in it."

Angelopoulos was born in Athens, where he studied law. After military service, he went to Paris to attend the Sorbonne but...

Greek director Theo Angelopoulos has died in a road accident aged 76. Here we look back at his body of work, which included The Travelling Players, Ulysses Gaze and Landscape in the Mist

The Travelling Players (1975)

Theo Angelopoulos's breakthrough film is a political allegory in disguise; a leftist analysis of democracy, fascism and national identity, shrewdly gussied up as the tale of a theatre tour through the Greek provinces and shot under the noses of the country's military junta. Rigorous, spartan, and yet brimming over with pungent mythic allusions, The Travelling Players established its creator as one of the most distinctive European directors of his generation.

Landscape in the Mist (1988)

The director hit the road again with this stark, soulful tale of two runaways in search of their missing father. The way ahead leads through misty towns and snowy wilderness, while the early social-realist air tilts, by degrees, towards surrealism.

Incompleteness was a recurrent theme for a film-maker who thought closure out of reach, always searching for the lost idyll of a nation torn apart by the 20th century

Theo Angelopoulos has been killed in a traffic accident while crossing a busy street in the middle of filming. This very fact has an enormous irony and poignancy: so much of his work is about the unfinished story, the unfinished journey, the unfinished life, and the realisation that to be unfinished is itself part of the human mystery and an essential human birthright and burden. This was part of what he conveyed to audiences, in a cinematic style that was poetry and epic poetry, steeped in the tumult of Greek history from the time of the second world war, and yet his movies were anything but frenzied or dramatic. They addressed not history's surface action but its spiritual causes and effects; he created long,...

Celebrated director was shooting new film The Other Sea when he was hit by a motorcycle, sustaining serious head injuries

Multi-award-winning Greek film-maker Theo Angelopoulos died last night, aged 76, after a road accident in the port town of Piraeus, just outside Athens. Angelopoulos was working on a new film, The Other Sea, when he was hit by a motorcycle and sustained serious head injuries. He died later in hospital.

The Other Sea, which was to star Italian actor Toni Servillo (The Consequences of Love), was Angelopoulos's first film since 2008's The Dust of Time, and was a study of the political and social turmoil currently affecting Greece. In this it was in keeping with his previous oeuvre, which was marked by an engagement with Greece's turbulent 20th-century history, along with its complex, dreamlike imagery.

Angelopoulos first made his name internationally with the 1975 film The Travelling Players, made during the colonels' military rule but released after.

Athens, Greece -- Theo Angelopoulos, an award-winning Greek filmmaker known for his slow and dreamlike style as a director, was killed in a road accident Tuesday while working on his latest movie. He was 76.

Police and hospital officials said Angelopoulos suffered serious head injuries and died at a hospital after being hit by a motorcycle while walking across a road close to a movie set near Athens' main port of Piraeus.

The driver, also injured and hospitalized, was later identified as an off-duty police officer.

The accident occurred while Angelopoulos was working on his upcoming movie "The Other Sea."

Angelopoulos had won numerous awards for his movies, mostly at European film festivals, during a career that spanned more than 40 years.

In 1995, he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Ulysses' Gaze," starring American actor Harvey Keitel.

Three years later, he won the main prize at the festival,...

Legendary Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos has died after suffering serious injuries in a road accident on Tuesday.

The director, 76, was crossing a road in Athens when he was knocked over by a motorcyclist. He sustained severe head injuries and died in a nearby hospital.

Angelopoulos began his career in 1968 and he enjoyed success as a director, producer and screenwriter for more than four decades.

He became known for his work on political Greek films Days of '36, The Hunters and The Travelling Players, which landed him a string of European awards including Best Film of the Year by the British Film Institute.

His other works include Voyage to Cythera, Ulysses' Gaze and Landscape in the Mist, which scored him the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at 1988's Venice Film Festival in Italy. A decade later, Angelopoulos won the prestigious Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival for Eternity and a Day.

Ulysses Gaze Review Pt.2: Harvey Keitel, Erland Josephson, Maia Morgenstern Ulysses' Gaze ends with his soliloquy of grief. The character's despair, even though he is now in sole possession of the reels, suggests that his real interest was never the old film footage. How it ties in to his own quest for past memories is uncertain. In fact, there is an air of self-delusion and disingenuity in his grief. As a performer, Harvey Keitel seems to be dreamily floating throughout much of the film. This approach mostly works, save for a few much too florid speeches. Erland Josephson seems a bit hyperactive as the historian, while Maia Morgenstern gives perhaps the film's finest performance — or rather, performances — even if some of the roles seem a bit too far out. Ulysses' Gaze also offers a magnificently effective score by Eleni Karaindrou, especially with great viola passages by Kim Kashkashian, which...

Ulysses Gaze Review Pt.1: d: Theo Angelopoulos That scene also probes one of the unspoken mysteries of the Harvey Keitel character: his relationship with assorted women, which seems to emanate from a rupture with his mother. Early on in the film, Keitel encounters a Greek film historian with whom he seemingly has an affair. Then, he becomes the lover of a war widow (recall, this is the mid-1990s Balkans), who conflates him with her dead husband. Finally, he seems to connect with the daughter of Sarajevo's local film archivist, Ivo Levy (Erland Josephson), who got possession of the three lost reels some years earlier, but could not get the right chemicals to develop them. (Josephson was a replacement for Gian Maria Volonté, who died during filming.) Yet, it is not certain how much of what happens with the archivist's daughter takes place in the film's inner reality or within Keitel's fantasies,...

To Vlemma Tou Odyssea / Ulysses' Gaze (1995) Direction: Theo Angelopoulos Cast: Harvey Keitel, Erland Josephson, Maia Morgenstern, Thanasis Vengos, Giorgos Mihalakopoulos Screenplay: Theo Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, Giorgio Silvagni Harvey Keitel, Ulysses' Gaze Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos' 1995 effort To Vlemma tou Odyssea / Ulysses' Gaze is the first of that director's four films that I have seen that is not unequivocally a great work of art. Although there are arguments that can be made in favor of that claim, the film's 173-minute running time is much too long, especially considering that Ulysses' Gaze is the least poetic of the aforementioned four films. (For the record, the others are Landscape in the Mist, Eternity and a Day, and Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow.) Of course, I'm not saying that Ulysses' Gaze is a bad film or that it lacks Angelopoulos' trademark visual poesy. On the other hand, the film lacks several important...

Just ten days ago, we were pointing to an interview in which a lively-sounding Theo Angelopoulos was telling David Jenkins in Sight & Sound about his plans for his next film, The Other Sea. Now word comes via, among others, Kevin Jagernauth at the Playlist that the 77-year-old filmmaker was struck by a motorcycle near the set not far from Athens' main port of Piraeus and has died of his injuries. At the moment, the AP has only a few other details on the accident.

Acquarello in Senses of Cinema in 2003: "From the absence of the conventional word 'End' at the conclusion of his films to his penchant for interweaving variations of episodes from his earlier films (which, in turn, are often culled from personal experience) to create interconnected 'chapters' of a continuous, unfinished work, Angelopoulos's cinema is both intimately autobiographical and culturally allegorical and, like the children of Landscape...

Greek filmmaker known for his slow and dreamlike style was killed in a road accident while working on his latest movie

Theo Angelopoulos, an award-winning Greek filmmaker known for his slow and dreamlike style as a director, has been killed in a road accident while working on his latest movie. He was 76.

Police and hospital officials said Angelopoulos suffered serious head injuries and died at a hospital after being hit by a motorcycle while walking across a road near a movie set near Athens' main port of Piraeus.

The driver, also injured and hospitalised, was later identified as an off-duty police officer.

The accident occurred while Angelopoulos was working on his upcoming movie "The Other Sea."

Angelopoulos had won numerous awards for his movies, mostly at European film festivals, during a career that spanned more than 40 years.

In 1995, he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Ulysses' Gaze,...

Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos died earlier today at a hospital near Athens. Angelopoulos had suffered serious head injuries after being hit by a motorcycle while crossing a road. He was 76. [Addendum: Angelopoulos died while filming The Other Sea, the third installment in a trilogy initiated with The Weeping Meadow and The Dust of Time (see below).] Known for his deliberately paced, dreamlike films, Angelopoulos and his movies won a number of awards from critics and at film festivals around the world. In 1995, for instance, Angelopoulos' Ulysses' Gaze won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Upon receiving his runner-up award, a none-too-pleased Angelopoulos' told those in attendance: "If this is what you have to give me, I have nothing to say." He then walked off without bothering to pose for photographers. Having learned their lesson, three years later Cannes' jurors gave Angelopoulos' the Palme d'Or for Eternity and a Day. Among Angelopoulos' other films are Voyage to Cythera,, Days of 36, The Travelling Players, and the slow-moving but unbelievably beautiful Landscape in the Mist.

(1970-1977, Artificial Eye, 15)

Now in his late 70s, Angelopoulos has been Greece's premier cinéaste for 40 years, a heroic international art-house figure making ambitious epic movies on major political, spiritual and mythical themes, usually at great length, at times overblown. The first volume of three is dominated by the four-hour masterwork that established his reputation, The Travelling Players (1975). A leftwing interpretation of Greece's turbulent history from 1939 to 1952 much influenced by Brecht and Jancsó, it traces in long, elaborate, fluid takes the adventures of an emblematic troupe of itinerant actors. The forthcoming second volume contains five equally expansive works, all long, serious, pessimistic and visually impressive. Each is a painful odyssey in time and space that ultimately repays the demands it makes on the audience. Two of them star Marcello Mastroianni in uptight mode (The Beekeeper, The Suspended Step of the Stork). Volume 3 will contain Ulysses' Gaze, an astonishing 1995 contribution to the...

Let's all be adults; this is not a puerile discussion of the male member. We're merely noting that throughout history, while paintings and sculptures have depicted the nude male body with regularity, film has a limited number of offerings (not counting the XXX variety, of course), whereas leading ladies (even Oscar-winning ones) drop cover again and again.

Michael Fassbender, however, has no qualms about showing what God gave him. In Steve McQueen's new drama "Shame," Fassbender plays a sex addict who's in the buff so often his body is naked nearly as often as its clothed. In honor of Fassbender's courage to reveal everything, we're celebrating the movies -- and actors -- who've dared to go full frontal.

9. 'A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas' (2011)

In the stoner duo's take on holiday flicks, Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) pay tribute to the infamous tongue-on-the-flagpole scene in "A Christmas Story,...

This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a friend have been debating about my qualities as a film critic, and they've involved a considerable critic, Dan Schneider, in their discussion. I will say that he has given the question a surprising amount of thought and attention over the years, and may well be correct in some aspects. What his analysis gives me is a renewed respect and curiosity about his own work.

¶

Dear Roger,

A friend and I would like to have your opinion. It's basically so that we can settle an argument (and small side bet) with a friend over what your opinion would be. My friend and I have carefully co-drafted this email to try to eliminate one or the other of our biases. I hope we succeeded!

I have read your columns and watched your tv shows for many years now...

You better watch out You better not cry You better have clout I'm telling you why Two Thumbs Down are comin' to town He's making a list,

Checking it twice;

Gonna find out whose

movie was scheiss.

Sandy Claws is comin' to town.

He sees you when you're (bleeping),

He knows when you're a fake

He knows if you've been bad or good

So be good for cinema's sake!

With little but scorn

and pounding of drums,

Rooty toot hoots

and rummy tum thumbs

Sandy Jaws is comin' to town

As I dream back over many happy years of movie going, some of my favorite lines from old reviews dance in my head like visions of sugarplums. Good movies, bad movies, doesn't matter, just so the line dances. I thought I'd share them in the holiday spirit. Curiously, most of the lines come from movies so bad I didn't want a refund,...