Swiss Film Awards 2007

2007 Swiss Film Awards
2007 Solothurn Film Festival: January 22-28, 2007
2007 Swiss Film Award winners
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Teo Gheorghiu, Bruno Ganz in Vitus
 

Best Film
Comme des voleurs / Like Thieves
Das Fräulein
Grounding
Mon frère se marie / My Brother Is Getting Married
* Vitus directed by Fredi M. Murer
Best Documentary
Das Erbe der Bergler
* Das Kurze Leben des José Antonio Gutierrez / The Brief Life of José Antonio Gutierrez directed by Heidi Specogna
Ein Lied für Argyris / A Song for Argyris
Hippie Masala
La Liste de Carla / Carla’s List
Best Performer in a Leading Role
* Jean-Luc Bideau, Mon frère se marie / My Brother Is Getting Married
Stephanie Glaser, Die Herbstzeitlosen
Michael Neuenschwander, Nachbeben
Best Performer in a Supporting Role
* Natacha Koutchoumov, Pas de panique / No [...]

by Andre Soares | January 29, 2007   
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2007 Swiss Film Award Winners

The 2007 Swiss Film Awards were announced yesterday at the 42nd Solothurn Film Festival.
Fredi M. Murer’s Vitus (right), which is one of the semi-finalists for this year’s best foreign-language film Academy Award, was selected as best Swiss film of 2006. Vitus, the story of a reluctant piano prodigy and his grandfather, stars Teo Gheorghiu and Bruno Ganz. It has sold nearly 200,000 tickets since its release in German-speaking Switzerland last year.
The best documentary winner was Heidi Specogna’s The Brief Life of José Antonio Gutierrez, about a Guatemalan street kid who, after immigrating to the United States, joined the U.S. marine corps hoping to gain U.S. citizenship but ended up as the first dead U.S. soldier in the Iraq [...]

by Andre Soares | January 25, 2007   
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London Film Critics Awards 2006

2006 London Film Critics’ Circle Awards
2006 London Film Critics’ Circle Award winners: Dorchester Hotel on February 8, 2006
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams in Brokeback Mountain
 

Best Film:
* Brokeback Mountain
The Constant Gardener
Crash
A History of Violence
King Kong
The Attenborough Award for British Film:
* The Constant Gardener
The Descent
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride & Prejudice
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Best Foreign-Language Film:
Hidden
The Chorus
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
The Sea Inside
* Downfall
Best Director:
David Cronenberg (A History of Violence)
Paul Haggis (Crash)
Peter Jackson (King Kong)
* Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)
Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener)
Best British Director:
Stephen Frears (Mrs. Henderson Presents)
Terry George (Hotel Rwanda)
Neil Marshall (The Descent) [...]

by Andre Soares | February 8, 2006   
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DOWNFALL Is a Box-Office Hit in Germany

This past weekend, 480,000 filmgoers across Germany lined up to get tickets for the €13.5 million (US$16.5 million) German-made Der Untergang / Downfall, the highly controversial film depicting Adolf Hitler’s last 12 days in his underground bunker. The figures for Downfall, which stars Bruno Ganz (the angel who becomes human in Wings of Desire) as the Nazi leader, were deemed particularly impressive since the nearly three-hour-long production only allowed two showings per evening.
In an interview with the Bild tabloid, former German chancellor Helmut Kohl declared that Downfall "was a film that had to be made and I hope that as many people as possible will see it." The former chancellor added, "It is an important film because it [...]

by Andre Soares | September 27, 2004   
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THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE d: Jonathan Demme

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Direction: Jonathan Demme
Screenplay: Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris, from George Axelrod’s 1962 screenplay and Richard Condon’s 1959 novel
Cast: Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Jeffrey Wright, Kimberly Elise, Bruno Ganz, Ted Levine, Vera Farmiga, Miguel Ferrer, Dean Stockwell, Simon McBurney

 

 
While keeping the framework of the 1962 original, Jonathan Demme’s remake of John Frankenheimer’s political thriller The Manchurian Candidate has revamped the plot so as to create parallels between what takes place on-screen and current events. The results are mixed at best.
In the new version, adapted by Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris from George Axelrod’s 1962 screenplay and Richard Condon’s 1959 Cold War novel, U.S. Army Major Bennett Marco (Denzel Washington) [...]

by Andre Soares | September 17, 2004   
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DOWNFALL Accused of Humanizing Hitler

One of history’s most hated monsters has undergone a humanizing makeover in the German motion picture Der Untergang: Hitler und das Ende des 3. Reiches (Downfall: Hitler and the End of the Third Reich), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
Based on historian Joachim Fest’s best-selling Adolf Hitler biography and on the memoirs of the dictator’s last personal secretary, Traudl Junge, Downfall chronicles the last days of the German Führer, besieged inside his underground bunker while the Soviet Red Army battled the Nazi forces on the ground.
During that period, Hitler suffers psychotic delusions and goes into mad rages, but also shows courteousness and even warmth toward Junge and his wife-to-be Eva Braun.
In the film, Hitler is played by Swiss-born actor [...]

by Andre Soares | September 4, 2004   
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