A Belmondo Birthday Salute

Tomorrow Jean-Paul Belmondo will be celebrating his 77th birthday. He's one of my favorite actors but I haven't had the opportunity to write about him very much so I decided to rectify that over at the Movie Morlocks Blog. I watched Breathless (À bout de souffle; 1960) for the sixth or seventh time yesterday and …

Modern Mondays: Love Songs (2007)

When I first mentioned that I was going to start "Modern Mondays" at Cinebeats I briefly discussed how much I liked musicals so I thought I'd share a few thoughts about the best musical I've seen in recent years, Love Songs (aka Les chansons d'amour; 2007). Love Songs was directed by the talented French filmmaker …

Filmmaking & Politics in 1968

The following four videos make up a fascinating 40 min. film by D.A. Pennebaker called Two American Audiences: La Chinoise - A Film in the Making. It chronicles a meeting that took place in 1968 between director Jean-Luc Godard and NYU film students who discuss Godard's film La Chinoise, filmmaking and politics. Two American Audiences: …

12 Films I Must See

I've mentioned before how much I dislike blog memes. I find most of them really dull and pointless, but occasionally I get asked to participate in one that sparks my interest. The following 12 Films I Must See meme was forwarded my way by Dennis at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule and it's …

DVD of the Week: Pierrot le fou (1965)

I've been trying to write out my thoughts about Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965) for days, but even after watching the film twice and enjoying all the wonderful extras included with the fantastic new Criterion DVD, I'm finding words inadequate to describe how much I've fallen in love with this wonderful movie in so …

List Making

Pictured Above: High and Low (1963), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) Eyes Without a Face (1960) Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Cleo From 5 to 7 (1961) I was invited to participate in putting together a list of Favorite Foreign Language Films at Edward Copeland's blog recently which is now open to online voting and I …

Contempt (1963)

I love soundtracks. I listen to film scores almost daily and as my last.fm charts show, I never get tired of my favorites. My blog's name "Cinebeats" is directly tied to my love for films and film soundtracks. When I heard about the Film Music Blog-a-thon I thought long and hard about the composers that …

Vive La France!

The Cannes Film Festival turns 60 this week and that's reason enough to celebrate all things fabulous and French, so I plan on doing just that throughout the next week until the festival wraps up. I haven't come across many books written about the early days of Cannes but I can recommend Cannes - Fifty …