#kevin macdonald

[castilestateofmind]

(ᛉ 08/11/1928 - ᛣ 20/11/2024)

[krispyweiss]

“One to One: John & Yoko” Hits Theaters April 11

For everything they did together, John Lennon and Yoko Ono played but two full-length concerts - both on the same day.

Those Aug. 30, 1972, shows at Madison Square Garden are the focus of “One to One: John & Yoko,” the Kevin Macdonald-directed documentary looking at the couple’s lives in Greenwich Village. It opens April 11 in movie theaters.

Built with restored footage from the gigs - Sean Ono Lennon remixed the sound - and never-released home movies, recorded telephone conversations and other archival documents, the film had its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and has just gotten its first trailer.

It shows Lennon to have good telephone manners and being unimpressed by his past, saying “that’s right, yeah” when someone on the other end of the line asks if he was “a member of the Beatles.”

For her part, Ono was entirely self-aware of how others perceived her.

“I was considered a bitch in this society,” she says in the clip. “Since I met John, I was upgraded into a witch.”

Lennon, of course, saw it differently, calling Ono “an independent, creative genius.”

3/12/25

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[ulrichgebert]

Grade als sich Daisy ein bisschen an ihre komischen englischen Cousins von Land gewöhnt hat, und sich sogar verliebt, bricht der dritte Weltkrieg aus. Ist jetzt weder die typische Teenieromanze noch der typische apokalyptische Endzeitfilm geworden.

[darshanan-blog]

The Mauritanian - #Netflix Film Review

Watching the 2021 film, “The Mauritanian”, is an insightful, eye opening yet heartbreaking, gut wrenching experience. The story is not new, but watching the film and related discussion is most fitting for this time when there are talks about suspending the Habeas Corpus as part of the current administration’s immigration crackdown.  Directed by Kevin Macdonald, the film starring Jodie Foster,…

[piovascosimo]

i've just seen one to one: john & yoko, and it's a great documentary, with no boring talking heads, just the 72' concert, and lots of archive footage of american tv in the early 70s, it's a great compilation of ads, interviews, newsreels, from politics to trivial consumerism, that puts you in the headspace of what was happening there in that era. it's also depressing how little has changed, so it can almost be read as a portrait of the US as a country. i love this concert so much, in fact my answer to 'which concert would you go to if you could travel back in time'' might be this one, because he sounds so fucking amazing, that voice, is just my favourite, it soothes, it pierces, it carries so much, i think he is the best vocalist of all time, the way he plays with it, and to see it in the cinema with great sound was just the best. people love to criticise his politics today, but what i found here is that he was pretty spot on, and was really interested in giving a voice to people who weren't being heard, a major voice trying to stop another devastating useless american war, trying to get out people who were unfairly thrown in jail and help those who needed. he was trying to give a new generation hope to fight, and i can't see any fault in that. it actually made me realise how much prominent cultural figures today are such cowards. i've always loved him, but the doc made me love him more. him meeting yoko was essential for pushing him where he was at here, they were partners and she is so intelligent. but john, oh his music and his poetry, to be able to make the immense feel so simple. and that voice, it makes my heart full.

[plastikov6]

[jmunneytumbler]

'One to One: John & Yoko' Captures a Moment

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Last King of Scotland (Macdonald, 2006)

As far as portrayals of Idi Amin go, Forest Whitaker is not the most uncanny mimic nor the one who most resembles him (that would be Joseph Olita in The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin), but he does a great job turning him into an actual character. And there are times, like a stone faced Amin watching Deep Throat and asking with total seriousness if it’s medically possible for the clitoris to be located in one’s throat, or Amin pranking the hero with his body double, that it evokes the sheer weirdness of his presence. But the movie leans on prestige movie tics of the era, and the twitchy cutting and handheld camerawork it uses to frame him undermine the power of Whitaker’s performance. 

The lack of confidence in how Amin should be handled also presents itself with the framing device, a white Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda and strikes up an unusually close relationship with Amin, to the point that he tags along for a trip to the Entebbe airport while the hostages from the Air France hijacking were being held there. The movie does make some effort to challenge this trope, and in fact Amin effectively calls it out to the hero’s face, which is a case of the worst person you know making a great point. It is worth noting that while the doctor wasn’t a real person, the character was in fact based on a few real life figures, so maybe this isn’t the most egregious example of the trope. 

Anyway, it sounds like I’m down on the movie, but by the standards of mid-2000s Oscar bait movies with Global South sheen and a made up white guy to frame a story about a more interesting non white character, this isn’t bad. Worth seeking out for Whitaker’s performance, or if you have some weird pathological need to compare onscreen portrayals of Idi Amin.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[greensparty]

John and Yoko and Beatles Docs Headed to Venice

At the Venice Film Festival next month, there are two documentaries premiering that have my attention immediately:

One to One: John & Yoko directed by Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) is "a moving look at the couple's life upon their entry into a transformative 1970's New York, exploring their musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world." It's produced by Brad Pitt and his production company. It will feature personal archives from John and Yoko and features remixed concert audio from Sean Ono Lennon.

Things We Said Today from Romanian director Andrei Ujica looks at the band's first North American tour in 1964. Ron Howard's excellent 2016 documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years looked at their touring era from 1962-1966, but this one seems to focus just on that very first tour when Beatle-mania hit the U.S. for the first time.

The link above is the article from Hollywood Reporter.

[ruleof3bobby]

HOW I LIVE NOW (2013) Grade: C

Felt messy, the plot was all over the place. Felt like they squeezed in 3 different movie ideas into 1 w a narrator trying to make sense of it all.

[krispyweiss]

“One to One: John & Yoko” to Make U.S. Debut at Sundance

- “I hope the film will introduce the audience to a more intimate version of” the couple, director Kevin Macdonald says

“One to One: John & Yoko” is set to premiere in the United States at the Sundance Film festival.

The Jan. 23-Feb. 1 event will mark the first stateside screenings after the Kevin Macdonald-directed documentary debuted in the U.K. in late 2024.

Centered around John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Aug. 30, 1972, One to One concerts at Madison Square Garden, Lennon’s only full-length, post-Beatles performances, the film relies on restored footage from the afternoon and evening gigs, plus never-released home movies, recorded telephone conversations and other archival documents to explore the couple’s “seminal and transformative” 18 months in Greenwich Village.

A short trailer gives away little, as it consists of brief snippets of unrelated video soundtracked with “New York City.”

Macdonald’s wish is “One to One” leaves even hard-core fans “surprise(d) and delight(ed),” the director said in a statement.

“I hope the film will introduce the audience to a more intimate version of John and Yoko - while also reflecting their politically radical and experimental sides,” he said.

1-6-25

[gregdotorg]

A great and insightful interview with Kevin Macdonald about his new documentary, High & Low — John Galliano, which does not sound like PR for Galliano's reputation and certainly not apologia for his vile anti-Semitic behavior back in the day.

At one point, Macdonald realizes Galliano is dealing with the documentary—over which he had no control—by making a fashion collection about being the subject of a documentary.

High & Low is streaming on Mubi.

[neovallense]

[movie-titlecards]

The Eagle (2011)

My rating: 5/10

Leave it to Americans to make it weird with the jingoism and all about a whole entire different empire than their own. Kinda homoerotic though.