2007 Nordic Film Festival Awards
Location: Rouen, France
In Joachim Trier’s Reprise, the lives of two friends (Espen Klouman Hoiner, Anders Danielsen Lie) take different turns after each has a manuscript published.
GRAND PRIX DU JURY: Reprise
Norwegian Film made by Joachim Trier
BEST ACTRESS AWARD: Sidse Babett Knudsen, After the Wedding
Danish Film made by Susanne Bier
BEST [...]
The Hills Have Eyes II (2007)
Director: Martin Weisz. Screenplay: Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven. Cast: Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob Vargas
Last year, the new version of The Hills Have Eyes failed to capture the terror of Wes Craven’s original 1977 classic, but it performed well enough at the box office to convince the [...]
As part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Gold Standard Series, the Academy Foundation will screen the premiere of the newly restored “film noir” Leave Her to Heaven on Friday, April 20, at 8 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills.
Leave Her to Heaven, released in the year World War [...]
Those who remember — or who have heard of — Claudette Colbert picture a woman raising her skirt so as to get a ride in Frank Capra’s 1934 Academy Award-winning comedy It Happened One Night (above, with Clark Gable).
Colbert, however, could get her way without having to resort to displaying her ankle to some poor, [...]
Next Thursday, March 29, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present another installment of its “Lost and Found” series, with a screening of two long-thought lost films that have been recently discovered and preserved by the Academy Film Archive: The Curse of Quon Gwon (1917), the first known feature made by Chinese-Americans, [...]
The Last Mimzy (2007)
Director: Robert Shaye. Screenplay: Toby Emmerich and Bruce Joel Rubin; screen story by James V. Hart and Carol Skilken, from the short story "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (both under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett). Cast: Chris O’Neil, Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, Joely Richardson, Timothy Hutton
The Last [...]
The Fearless Vampire Killers / Dance of the Vampires (1967)
Director: Roman Polanski. Screenplay: Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach. Cast: Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, Ferdy Mayne
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
One of the overlooked aspects of most of the vintage 1960s and 1970s Hammer Studios horror films is that they were quite funny, [...]
Vargtimmen / Hour of the Wolf(1968)
Direction and Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman. Cast: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
Vargtimmen / Hour of the Wolf, a 1968 film by Ingmar Bergman, proves the nostrum that even lesser work by a great artist surpasses the better work of lesser artists, for Bergman can [...]
I’m not a big fan of most of the film’s found in film historian Kevin Brownlow’s list of "essential silents" — The Crowd and The Wind are the two I like best; I haven’t seen Varieté, yet — even though Brownlow certainly included 10 of the most renowned silent ever made.
Now, if I were [...]
Posted in Classics, Film, Silent Films on March 25th, 2007 1 Comment »
Film historian Kevin Brownlow in the Sunday Times:
"This year is the 80th anniversary of The Jazz Singer, the film that brought the silent era to an end. The talkie revolution undoubtedly enriched the cinema, but it ended something magnificent. The silent film was a universal language. Change the titles, and your film could be seen [...]
Guillermo del Toro’s dark fairy-tale El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth was the big winner at the Mexican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ 49th Ariel Awards ceremony held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City on Mar. 20.
Set in the 1940s, the Mexican-Spanish co-production about a young girl’s entry into [...]
Shooter (2007)
Director: Antoine Fuqua. Screenplay: Jonathan Lemkin. Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, Michael Peña, Kate Mara.
A graduate of the George W. Bush School of Peace and Democracy, Mark Wahlberg gives a demonstration of his skills as global peacemaker.
MR. SWAGGER GOES TO WASHINGTON
When former marine corps scout sniper Bob Lee Swagger is called to [...]
Part four of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ "Great To Be Nominated" series will kick off on Monday, April 23, with a screening of George Lucas’s cornball space saga Star Wars. The 16-week series will showcase Best Picture also-rans that received the most Oscar nominations in a particular year. This fourth installment [...]
Suffering and Smiling (2006)
Director: Dan Ollman
The mass suffering of the people of Africa has long been ignored by more affluent governments elsewhere. This neglect is compounded by the fact that much of that affluence has come from plundering the natural resources of the African continent — with little thanks or reimbursement to the people who [...]
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Albert Maysles, 80, will be the featured guest at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ John Huston Lecture on Documentary Film on Thursday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater at the Academy’s Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood. The event will consist of discussions [...]
After some debating, I’ve decided to post a link to two video clips showing behind-the-scenes battles between Lily Tomlin and director David O. Russell during the making of the dreary I Heart Huckabees. The 48-year-old Russell has a reputation for being difficult, and has reportedly gotten into a brawl with George Clooney during the making [...]
"It’s almost strange that it’s the first ceremony," remarked French director Luc Besson at the 1st Asian Film Awards presentation held this evening at Hong Kong’s Convention and Exhibition Centre, as part of the 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival which kicked off last night.
"Good films come from everywhere," added Besson. "Artists are like mushrooms, [...]
Punam (2006)
Director: Lucian Muntean.
The right of a child to experience the joys of learning and playing is rarely disputed. Yet, as Lucian Muntean’s 27-minute documentary Punam shows, our world ignores the plight of millions of children like Punam Tamang, a motherless nine-year-old Nepalese girl caught in the inescapable trap of poverty and child labor. Learning [...]
I Think I Love My Wife (2007)
Director: Chris Rock. Screenplay: Chris Rock, Louis C.K. Cast: Chris Rock, Kerry Washington, Gina Torres, Steve Buscemi
In case you’ve just wrapped up your wedding rehearsal and you plan on taking your future spouse to a movie, make sure to avoid Chris Rock’s latest one-man vehicle I Think I [...]
About a month ago, I posted an incomplete list of winners of the French Film Critics 2007 Étoiles d’Or, which had been announced the month before. Since I’ve finally completed the list of the French film critics’ winners — and nominees — I’ve decided to post a brief article about them. I’ll take any opportunity [...]
22nd Mar del Plata Film Festival Awards - 2007
The 22nd Mar del Plata Film Festival Award was held between Mar-8-18, 2007.
The 22nd Mar del Plata Film Festival Award winners were announced on Mar. 18, 2007.
Directed by Cesc Gay, Fiction tells the story of a film director who, while resting at a friend’s home in a [...]
The winners at the 2007 SXSW Film Festival, held in Austin, TX, (the festival actually ends tomorrow), were announced on March 14.
Jamie Babbit’s Itty Bitty Titty Committee (right), about a young woman who gets involved in the radical lesbian group CIA (Clits in Action), took the best narrative feature prize. Itty Bitty Titty Committee will [...]
I’ve finally added the list of winners at the 2007 Miami International Film Festival, which was held between March 2-11.
Marco Williams’s Banished, which discusses the post-Civil War expulsion of blacks from numerous communities across the United States, was chosen best documentary. The special jury prize in that category went to Carlos Bosch’s Septiembres / Septembers, [...]
Rosita (2005)
Directors: Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater. Screenplay: María López Vigil
Rosita was a 9-year-old Nicaraguan girl who liked drawing colorful pictures. One day, this young girl’s life was drastically changed when, on the way to school, she was invited into her neighbor’s house and was raped.
Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater’s powerful documentary Rosita captures [...]
Via the [London] Independent:
Chris Sullivan’s "Performance: Anita Pallenberg talks about the notorious Sixties film"
"’But I’d been around a lot before I met any of the Rolling Stones,’ says [Anita] Pallenberg, in her beautiful, wood-panelled, apartment overlooking Chelsea Embankment. ‘I was in Rome in 1960 just as La Dolce Vita was happening and met [Federico] [...]
