Tatsuya Nakadai obituary

One of the greatest actors of Japanese cinema best known for Ran, the 1985 film adaptation of King Lear Though he had the well-appointed bone structure of the 1950s matinee idol, it was Tatsuya Nakadai ’s eyes that seized film audiences. Using these huge brown saucers to telegraph naivety or eerie self-possession, the Japanese actor, who has died aged 92, seemed at times to be able to make them protrude from his skull. In the centrepiece scene of Akira Kurosawa ’s 1985 King Lear adaptation Ran , when Nakadai’s warlord is ejected from his burning castle, his glare of incipient madness is unbearable. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/mu30Rqs via IFTTT

The Exorcist review – Friedkin’s head-swivelling horror is still diabolically inspired

The 50th anniversary extended director’s cut of the 1973 tale of teenage possession still shocks

William Friedkin’s deadly serious contemporary horror, adapted for the screen from the bestseller by novelist William Peter Blatty, is back now in cinemas for its 50-year anniversary in the extended director’s cut. This is the film that whispered its evil into the ears of US audiences traumatised by political and generational upheaval. It is also the great ancestor of the entire horror genre: a 132-minute jump scare – with horribly malign slow sections – taking place in upper-middle class America rather than some exotic central European locale. (I have in the past suggested that it brought supernatural fear into the American suburbs; well, I should admit that Georgetown in DC is hardly a suburb, in fact the point is that it is very near the political centre of the free world.)

Ellen Burstyn plays movie actor Chris MacNeil, a single mother ordinarily resident in California but currently renting a handsome townhouse in Washington as she shoots a film called Crash Course; she is playing a liberal academic at odds with the student body who are violently possessed with revolutionary ideas. Her director is a louche and boozy Brit called Burke Dennings, whose persona is maybe inspired a bit by Ken Russell, who is played by veteran Irish stage actor Jack MacGowran and whose death shortly after shooting helped create the “cursed film” aura that surrounds The Exorcist.

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