Antichrist

Favourite film

Antichrist (main picture) because it dares to play with modern aesthetics by revisiting a genre and binding it to its roots by disrupting the comfort of the audience in order to make them investigate and discover their intimate fears. Antichrist, after years of the devaluation of genre films, enables us to once again find the spirit of the first films of Cronenberg, Craven or Carpenter where we didn’t need to laugh at the evisceration of high school girls in order to see horror.

Biggest news story

For me,  David Linde’s departure from Universal - and God knows I could explode at him each time a film I was after ended up at Focus. But still, his leaving sounds the death knell of cinematic ambition on the part of the studios and acts as a sort of funeral for the last two decades which, following the success of Miramax, saw the studios taking a risk by financing adult and ambitious films.

Linde’s leaving, more so than [Paramount Film Group president John and former Vantage chief] Lesher, even though he was part of the same movement, leaves us expecting a decade of formatted products: sequels, prequels and remakes and a conservatism that will affect an entire generation of filmmakers in their own ambition.

Of course, there will be a see-saw effect that will correct things when conservatism ends up boring and annoying everyone but this time, maybe we’ll have lost a generation of cinephiles who will have turned towards other art forms. Or maybe we’ll just have to give up the idea of making people better via film in favor of the brainwashing that is TV.

In all of that, if I could just add a second bit of news that is more hopeful it would be the success of Inglourious Basterds (pictured, right) which proves that 20 years later, if there is only one man left, it’s still the same guy - dead and buried at least two times. Harvey Weinstein alone carries the flag of independence and audacity.

Changes in store for 2010

They’re not very positive. There will be a rarification of ambitious, independent projects; there will be fear, formatting and conservatism but we  know that these are the conditions that make for recreating challenges, energy and which give birth to something strong…but that’ll be for later on.