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European Film Awards 2009: Nominations

Tahar Rahim in A Prophet (top); Dev Patel, Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire (middle); The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke (bottom)

Six films are vying for the top prize at the 2009 European Film Awards. They are:

Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, about a teenager (best actress nominee Katie Jarvis) upset that her mother has found herself a new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender)
Stephen Daldry’s The Reader, a melodrama starring Kate Winslet as a former Nazi guard who believes that being illiterate is worse than being an accomplice to mass murder
Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, a prison drama about a toughie (best actor nominee Tahar Rahim) fighting his way to the top of the world behind bars
Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, about a young man (best actor [...]

BROKEN EMBRACES Images

Lluís Homar in Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces

Blanca Portillo

Rubén Ochandiano, Tamar Novas
Photos: © Emilio Pereda & Paola Ardizzoni / El Deseo, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz – BROKEN EMBRACES Set

Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz on the set of Broken Embraces.
Photos: © Emilio Pereda & Paola Ardizzoni / El Deseo, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Penélope Cruz – BROKEN EMBRACES Photos

Pedro Almodóvar’s noirish (in color) Broken Embraces, which was screened in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, opens in New York City on November 20 and in Los Angeles on December 11.
Broken Embraces star several Almodóvar alumni: Muse Penélope Cruz (a potential Oscar 2010 contender in the best actress category), Lluís Homar of Bad Education, Blanca Portillo and Lola Dueñas of Volver, Rossy de Palma of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Chuz Lampeavre of just about everything Almodóvar has ever directed.
Also: Rubén Ochandiano (of Che), Tamar Novas (of The Sea Inside), Carlos Leal (of Chef’s Special), and José Luis Gómez (of Goya’s Ghosts).
Broken Embraces Trailer.
Photos: © Emilio Pereda & Paola Ardizzoni / El Deseo, [...]

BROKEN EMBRACES Trailer

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, Broken Embraces stars Penélope Cruz and Lluís Homar. Cruz is a potential Oscar 2010 best actress contender for this film.
Broken Embraces synopsis from the press release:
A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life.
This man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with which he lives and signs the film he directs. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces himself to his pseudonym, Harry Caine. [...]

Oscar 2010: More Best Picture Contenders

Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw in Bright Star

Oscar 2010: Early Predictions for Best Picture Part I
Among the top runners-up in that category are: Jane Campion’s period romance Bright Star, which would have a much better chance had its box-office figures been more impressive; Quentin Tarantino’s dark World War II fantasy Inglourious Basterds; Marc Webb’s quirky 500 Days of Summer; Tom Hooper’s The Damned United, about Leeds United coach Brian Clough; Tom Ford’s A Single Man, based on a Christopher Isherwood novel; Michael Moore’s anti-Wall Street Capitalism: A Love Story; and Pete Docter’s animated hit Up.

And here are some more: Clint Eastwood’s Invictus (above, with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon), adapted by Anthony Peckham from John Carlin’s [...]

Cannes 2009: Best Actress Favorites

Best Actress
Charlotte Gainsbourg as a bereaved mother in Antichrist.
Penélope Cruz, Almodóvar’s diva in Broken Embraces.
Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star.
Katie Jarvis as an aimless teenager in Fish Tank.
Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Benito Mussolini’s ex in Vincere.
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Best Director Favorites

Best Director
Pedro Almodóvar for Broken Embraces
Jacques Audiard for A Prophet
Jane Campion for Bright Star
Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon
Alain Resnais for Wild Grass
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Pedro Almodóvar’s BROKEN EMBRACES

Broken Embraces: Pedro Almodóvar on the set (top); Penélope Cruz as the heroine (bottom).
In the mystery-melodrama, a director and his female star begin a passionate love affair that leads to all sorts of trouble.

Wendy Ide in The [London] Times:
"Certainly, it is unmistakably an Almodovar film. Nobody else does richly-textured melodrama quite like him; nobody else can encourage such overwrought performances without unbalancing the film; nobody else shoots Penélope Cruz with a reverence which borders on fan-worship. But what’s missing here is the warmth and emotional honesty that infuses Almodovar’s most successful features. What’s missing is, arguably, Almodovar himself."
***
Eric Kohn in indieWIRE:
"Pedro Almodovar offers nothing new in his [...]

Cannes 2009: Competition Films

Cannes Film Festival 2009: Competition Line-Up
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), Pedro Almodóvar, Spain

Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold, UK

Un prophète (A Prophet), Jacques Audiard, France

Vincere, Marco Bellocchio, Italy

Bright Star, Jane Campion, UK

Bakjwi (Thirst), Park Chan-wook, South-Korea

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, Isabel Coixet, Spain

À l’origine (In the Beginning), Xavier Giannoli, France

Das weisse Band (The White Ribbon), Michael Haneke, Austria

Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee, USA
Palme d’Or Line-Up: Part II

Pedro Almodóvar’s BROKEN EMBRACES Inspired by Darkness

Penélope Cruz, seen above in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, will not look like this in Pedro Almodóvar’s next film, Los Abrazos rotos, for the director asserts he doesn’t want his leading lady to "repeat those [hairstyles] she has worn in other films."
 
Pedro Almodóvar, on his website:
"Regarding the English translation of the original title, Los abrazos rotos, I have seen in some publications that it has been translated as ‘Broken Hugs’ and in others as ‘Broken embraces.’ I don’t have a sufficient knowledge of English to decide which is correct, or if both are, but I get the impression that in my story the ‘abrazos’ are more embraces than hugs.
"My ‘abrazos’ are not fraternal or [...]

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