Cultural Capital: film

How quaint to think of people settling down in their cinema seats to watch the White Stripes' live documentary Under Great White Northern Lights, which was released last Friday.

I realise that the brief theatrical outing of such films is really just a promotional exercise to shift more copies of the DVD (and, in this case, the accompanying live album too), as it was with the Blur film No Distance Left ... read more

For several years now, the Polish Cultural Institute has been making efforts to educate Britons about their (not so) distant European neighbour. In recent months, we've seen exhibitions from the artist Miroslaw Balka, reviewed here by Sue Hubbard, and a festival to celebrate Chopin's bicentenary.

Currently under way is Kinoteka, a festival of Polish film now in its eighth year. The two films I've seen so far are ... read more

This is a week to consider absent friends. Some are absent after goofing around in class -- that would be Nicolas Chartier, one of the producers of The Hurt Locker, who was barred from attending the Oscars ceremony after circulating emails badmouthing rival nominees.

Others are absent through no fault of their own -- such as Jafar Panahi, the great Iranian director who has moved freely between appealing whimsy (The ... read more

The youthful cinema obsessive, denied access to your 15- and 18-rated releases (or, for the more seasoned moviegoers among us, your AAs and Xs), has no choice but to experience this forbidden fruit through the vicarious thrill of the film poster.

We come together today not to hail the sumptuous history of poster art, which surely needs no cheerleaders, but to celebrate the tagline: the pitch that takes root in your ... read more

Awards fatigue, which descends around this time each year, has been alleviated slightly by last week's London Film Critics' Circle Awards. As a voting member, I was naturally thrilled to see the award for Film of the Year go to what I considered to be the right film -- A Prophet -- and even in the other categories there wasn't much to quibble with.

Let the Right One In and ... read more

Amazingly, Channel 4's Red Riding trilogy (based on the novels by David Peace) has been released as a five-hour film in the US.

David Denby, writing in the New Yorker, finds it "an exhausting, morbidly fascinating, and finally thrilling experience", proving that while the export of television dramas across the Atlantic has been a one-way trade in recent years, it doesn't have to be.

Red Riding was part of a ... read more

It's been a while since anyone discussed Roman Polanski as a film-maker, but let me put aside for now such words as "extradition" and "house arrest" in order to proclaim the giddy brilliance of his new thriller, The Ghost, which premiered last week at the Berlin Film Festival.

The picture is adapted from Robert Harris's scurrilous novel about a ghostwriter (played by Ewan McGregor), hired to produce the memoirs ... read more

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, born in 1953, first made his name with the black comedy Delicatessen (1991). He went on to direct Alien: Resurrection (1997) and the international hit Amélie (2001), which starred Audrey Tautou. Micmacs is released on 26 February.

Your new film, Micmacs, is about a gang of outcasts who foil some shady arms dealers. But what does the title mean?

It's slang and, depending on the context, means a mixture, ... read more

Rich, vigorous and inventive swearing on film is hard to come by now -- either that or I'm inured to it -- but there's a foul-mouthed feast for the ears in 44 Inch Chest. This Pinteresque British film, released last month, is about a group of splenetic thugs who kidnap a young waiter who has cuckolded one of their number. While not especially distinguished, the picture has three things ... read more

The arts website IFC has a rare interview with Chris Morris. The comedian behind the cult television shows Brass Eye and The Day Today usually avoids talking to the press, but was giving interviews at this year's Sundance Festival to promote his directorial debut, Four Lions.

The film, a "jihadist comedy", will inevitably be compared to Armando Iannucci's Oscar-nominated political satire In the Loop (the two films even share a ... read more

The New Statesman is working with the BFI Southbank to offer an exclusive screening of Danis Tanovic's 2001 film No Man's Land, set in Bosnia during the war there in the early 1990s. The film will be followed by a panel discussion on the topic "How the media influence conflicts", using Bosnia as a case study.

Saturday 13 February, BFI Southbank, London SE1

No Man's Land will be shown at 12.45pm, ... read more

The obvious change to this year's Academy Awards nominations is the decision to override the five-film limit on Best Picture nominees that has been in force since 1944. Now ten titles are competing for the prize that tells idiots which movies they should ask their teenage children to download illegally on their behalf.

For all the difference it will make to the end result, the Academy might as well have ... read more