Alternative Film Guide

World Cinema Clips: Luis Buñuel, exiled from Spain since 1938, returned to his country of birth to make Viridiana, a low-key — but pitch-black — comedy about traditional European (read: Christian) mores that went on to receive the 1961 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.
The film stars Silvia Pinal as a young, idealist nun-to-be whose efforts [...]

The 2008 Tiburon (Calif.) International Film Festival (TIFF), set for March 13–21, will be showcasing more than 225 films from 94 countries.
The festival will open with the US premiere of Miguel Angel Calvo Buttini’s political comedy Dos rivales casi iguales / Twins for President at 7 p.m. at the Playhouse Theater on March 13.
Twins [...]

2007 Goya Awards
2007 Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Goya Award nominees: December 17, 2007.
2007 Goya Award winners: Madrid on February 3, 2008.
Nominees consist of films released in Spain between Dec. 1, 2006, and Nov. 30, 2007.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Jaime Rosales‘ La Soledad (top photo) won Goyas for best film [...]

As per John Hopewell in Variety, Juan Antonio Bayona’s psychological thriller The Orphanage has grossed €5.8 million at the Spanish box office during its first few days of release. That is supposedly the second best opening ever — after Santiago Segura’s Torrente 3 — for a Spanish film. (I’m assuming inflation hasn’t been factored in.)
The [...]

El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Direction and screenplay: Guillermo del Toro. Cast: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones, Ariadna Gil, Álex Angulo, Manolo Solo
 

OFELIA’S ADVENTURES IN WEIRDLAND
This review contains spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.
"If you expect to get laid after this screening," filmmaker Guillermo del Toro told the midnight [...]

Via Zinema:
According to a poll organized by SigmaDos, Pedro Almodóvar is the best known Spanish film director among Spanish citizens. Almodóvar was identified by 69 per cent of Spaniards.
He is followed by:

Academy Award winner and multiple Goya winner (for The Sea Inside) Alejandro Amenábar (34.3%);
Academy Award nominee (for The Grandfather) José Luis [...]

The American Cinematheque has been screening a series of films — most of them rare, not on DVD, and in new 35mm prints — with fantastic/ghostly/spooky/creepy themes at their 7th Festival of Fantasy, Horror & Science-Fiction at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The series began on Aug. 2, but since it still has about ten [...]

This past Thursday, June 14, one of the world’s top directors of the last 25 years, Pedro Almodóvar, was presented with the title of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, one of Italy’s highest civilian honors. The Spanish director received the Commendation for his "contributions to European cinema and culture" from [...]

Estrellas de La Línea / The Railroad All Stars (2006)
Direction and screenplay: Chema Rodríguez
 

By Rosemary Westwell
Directed by Chema Rodríguez, Estrellas de La Línea / The Railroad All Stars traces the lives of a plucky group of prostitutes who live in dismal conditions near a railroad in Guatemala City. Determined to bring some dignity [...]

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 [...]

Perhaps there’s something I’m missing here, but the Orange British Academy of Film and Television Arts has decided that Kevin Macdonald’s The Last King of Scotland is the outstanding British film of 2006, coming out ahead of United 93, Notes on a Scandal, Casino Royale, and Stephen Frears’s The Queen. Yet, that very same Orange [...]

The winners of the 27th London Film Critics’ Circle (LFCC) awards were announced this evening at a ceremony held in aid of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children at the Dorchester Hotel.
LFCC awards chair Marianne Gray asserted that The Queen — winner of the best British film, best British director (Stephen [...]

Just like in old Hollywood movies: Penélope Cruz bursts out singing upon learning that she’ll soon be working with both Woody Allen and Pedro Almodóvar.
Two of the best film news of late:

Spanish Academy Goya winner and Academy Award nominee Penélope Cruz will star in Woody Allen’s next film, to be shot in Barcelona during [...]

Here’s another belated awards-related post, this time on the Spanish Academy’s Goya Awards, which were presented on Jan. 28.
Although Volver seemed like an easy pick, it actually faced stiff competition from both Agustín Díaz-Yanes’s period adventure piece Alatriste and Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth.
Ultimately, Volver took home five [...]

Penélope Cruz told Academy members to vote for her — or else. Pedro Almodóvar should have applied the same vote-getting technique.
 
"There’s so many Mexicans!" exclaimed Mexican actress Salma Hayek, too excited to conjugate her verbs properly, upon announcing — along with Academy president Sid Ganis — some of the nominees for the 79th Academy Awards.
Indeed. [...]

The Palm Springs International Film Festival announced its jury and audience winners this past Sunday, Jan. 14.
The New Voices New Visions Grand Jury Prize was given to Rafi Pitts’s Iranian drama Zemestan / It’s Winter, the story of a woman left behind in a small Iranian town after her husband travels abroad looking for work.

The [...]

Orange British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards - BAFTA Awards 2006
The 2006 Orange British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award nominations were announced on January 12, 2007.
The 2006 BAFTA award winners were announced at the Royal Opera House in London on February 11, 2007.
2006 Bafta Winners - Article
2006 Bafta Nominations [...]

Though usually more open to non-English-language films than the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Orange British Academy of Film and Television Arts failed to place either Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver or Guillermo del Toro’s El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth as one (or two) of its best film or best director [...]

The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC), composed of 58 U.S. critics mostly based in New York City and Los Angeles, has chosen Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-language dark fantasy El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth as the best film of 2006. Curiously, the two runners-up were also shot in a language other than English: [...]

Via Adam Dawtrey’s article "’Casino,’ ‘Queen’ lead pack" in Variety:
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced the longlists for the 2006 Bafta Awards. The lists consist of 15 titles per category picked after the first round of BAFTA voting.
Casino Royale and The Queen, the two most commercially successful British [...]

The American Cinematheque and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will present all five foreign-language films nominated for the 2006 Golden Globe Awards at The Aero’s Max Palevsky Theatre in Santa Monica.
The five nominees are: Apocalypto (U.S.), El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth (Spain / Mexico / U.S.), Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives [...]

There were few major surprises in the Online Film Critics Society’s list of 2006 nominees, though Guillermo del Toro’s haunting and ultra-violent "fairy tale for adults," El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth, scored remarkably well: 6 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Foreign Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay (also del Toro). (Unfortunately, there [...]

Agustín Díaz Yanes’s 17th-century tale of a Spanish soldier turned mercenary, Alatriste, and Pedro Almodóvar’s story of the women of La Mancha, Volver, dominated the Spanish Film Academy’s XXI Goya Award nominations announced yesterday, Dec. 18, by actors Pilar López de Ayala and Juan José Ballesta. Alatriste, the most expensive Spanish film ever made (€24 [...]

21st Goya Awards - 2006
The 21st Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Goya Award nominees were announced by Pilar López de Ayala and Juan José Ballesta on Dec. 18, 2006.
The 21st Goya Award winners were announced at the Palacio Municipal de Congresos del Campo de las Naciones in Madrid on Jan. 28, 2007.
Nominees [...]

The biggest surprise found in the list of winners of the 2006 National Board of Review awards was the choice of Clint Eastwood’s View from the Other Side, the Japanese-language World War II drama Letters from Iwo Jima, as the Best Film of the year.
This marked only the third time that the NBR’s Best [...]