Tag: Oscar Awards

Film Feature: Chad’s Top 10 Films of 2016

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2016

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2016. Here is Chad’s list, presented in descending rank order. And check out Carrie’s list!

10.) Hail, Caesar!

Tatum goes full Coen.

It takes a few viewings to fully appreciate the tremendous wit and satirical humor in Hail, Caesar! When the Coen Brothers released their latest film earlier this year, it was met with a lukewarm reception from audiences and critics, partially due to the Oscar-worthy brilliance of their previous three films — A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis. Compared to those three, Hail, Caesar! is a silly comedy, yet it’s actually both an entertaining throwback and a salute to the unseen Hollywood players of the 1950s studio system, specifically the Hollywood fixer, played here by a confident Josh Brolin. Mix in a few Golden Age film sets, including those of an elaborate synchronized swimming musical number, and a Roman sandal epic, and cap it off with a phenomenal straight-out-of-the-’50s song and dance number with a handful of handsome seamen (led by Channing Tatum), and you’ve got a colorful, slightly absurdist take on Hollywood yesteryear that only the Coen Brothers can manage and deliver. Hail, Caesar! also puts Alden Ehrenreich on the map; here he plays a lovable typecast singin’ cowboy, and you’ll see him again soon as a young Han Solo. (You can also read my full-length review here.)

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Spinning Platters Interview: Benjamin Renner, “Ernest & Celestine”

A beautiful frame from 'Ernest & Celestine'
A beautiful frame from ‘Ernest & Celestine’

Nearly a year after Ernest & Celestine screened at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival, this charming French animated film is finally being released into U.S. theaters (in the Bay Area on 3/28).  I’ve been eagerly awaiting this moment, since Ernest & Celestine was not only one of my favorite films of 2013, but also one of my favorite animated films of all time.  At last year’s SFIFF, Benjamin Renner, co-director of the film, was simultaneously exhausted, excited, and relieved that the film was getting such a great response.  With his friends waiting to go celebrate over a few drinks, Mr. Renner was kind enough to sit down with me at the Sundance Kabuki, just outside the auditorium where his film just finished screening, to discuss his experience…

Chad: How did you first get involved with this film?

Benjamin Renner: I started working on this when I just left school.  I didn’t know anything except that it was an adaptation of the books by Gabrielle Vincent.  The producer, Didier Brunner, the one who made Triplets of Belleville and Kirikou and the Sorceress, really famous in France, asked me if I could help work on this film.  So I started reading the books, Ernest & Celestine, and I was so impressed by the books, the drawings, and everything.  So I said, ‘I really want to work on this.   Whatever position you want to give me.  Even if I’m making coffee, I don’t care, it’s perfect.’  I really wanted to work on the animation, especially.  So I started making him small animations.  He loved it and said that I could work on the film.  So that’s how I got involved.  I was not a director, just a lead animator.

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Show Review: A Night at the Oscars with the SF Symphony

A classy evening, complete with film classics.

As God is my witness, I’ll never listen to film score the same way again!

On Saturday, Feb. 15th, just two weeks before the 86th Academy Awards, the San Francisco Symphony hosted a night that celebrated a handful of iconic scenes from some of the very first, and most beloved, best musical score Oscar winners and nominees.  Showcasing films as early as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) to as late as Ben-Hur (1959), the packed audience at Davies Symphony Hall marveled at fully restored 35 mm prints from six classics of cinema, including Gone with the Wind (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), An American in Paris (1951), and finally, The Wizard of Oz (1939), all the while enjoying the talented San Francisco orchestra drive through the scenes with scores ranging from bombastic to haunting to whimsical.

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