Cannes 2009: Heath Ledger in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian:
"Heath Ledger takes a poignant final bow in Terry Gilliam’s loopy, sweet-natured but madly self-indulgent fantasia The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, showing here at the Cannes film festival out of competition. Halfway through shooting, Ledger had made a desperately sad early exit, so the director ingeniously re-invented his character as a series of personae. Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp gamely stepped into the breach.

"When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. … But the film’s convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how ‘imaginative’ everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy [...]

Golden Globes 2009

2009 Golden Globes
Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s 2009 Golden Globe nominations: December 11, 2008
2009 Golden Globe winners: January 11, 2009
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire
 
MOTION PICTURES
Best Motion Picture, Drama
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Revolutionary Road
* Slumdog Millionaire
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Burn After Reading
In Bruges
Happy-Go-Lucky
Mamma Mia!
* Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Ari Folman – © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards
Best Foreign Language Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex, Germany
Everlasting Moments, Sweden / Denmark
Gomorrah, Italy
I’ve Loved You So Long, France
* Waltz with Bashir, Israel
Best Animated Film
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
* WALL-E
Best Director
* Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Steven Daldry – The Reader
David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon
Sam Mendes – Revolutionary Road
Best Actor, Drama
Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary [...]

Oscar 2008: Colin Farrell, Helen Mirren, Patrick Dempsey, Viggo Mortensen

Colin Farrell, Robert Osborne

Patrick Dempsey, Robert Osborne

Viggo Mortensen

Helen Mirren
Photos: Matt Petit (Dempsey, Farrell, Mortensen), Richard Harbaugh (Mirren). All photos: © A.M.P.A.S.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Sundance 2008: IN BRUGES, DIMINISHED CAPACITY

Liam Lacey on Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges at the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"Colin Farrell [above] and Brendan Gleason [sic] appear to draw on the model of the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, with Farrell as the anxious, not-so-bright apprentice and Gleeson as his composed, epicurean partner, as they await orders from their irascible overseer (Ralph Fiennes). McDonagh’s dialogue is consistently clever, though his pacing is a problem, as is his weakness for corny surrealism: Peter Dinklage appears as a snide dwarf American movie actor; doing a knock-off version of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Back [sic] in a set designed to look like a Hieronymus Bosch painting."
***

At indieWIRE, actor and theater director Terry Kinney, whose feature-film debut, the dramatic comedy [...]

ALEXANDER II – Colin Farrell

ALEXANDER Review: Part I
Fast forward to the Battle of Gaugamela (in today’s northern Iraq), where Alexander is discussing war strategies with his generals and counselors. His father murdered by a traitor (Olympias may have had a hand in Philip’s assassination) and all potential rivals to the throne murdered at his command, Alexander has become the supreme ruler of the Macedonian empire, which now stretches all the way to the border with Persia. Without a Macedonian equivalent of Freud to help him sort through his Oedipus complex, his father-son complex, his demigod aspirations, and other assorted neuroses, Alexander has turned into an overachiever who is compelled to go on conquering whichever land he finds in his way. That will keep him [...]

ALEXANDER d: Oliver Stone

Alexander (2004)
Direction: Oliver Stone
Screenplay: Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle, and Laeta Kalogridis
Cast: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Jared Leto, Anthony Hopkins, Rosario Dawson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Christopher Plummer, Gary Stretch, Neil Jackson, Raz Degan
 

Colin Farrell in Alexander
 

Two-time Academy Award winning director Oliver Stone is no stranger to controversy. His latest polemic comes courtesy of the director’s first historical epic, Alexander, the story of the Macedonian ruler (356-323 BCE) who conquered most of the world known to the Ancient Greeks. The arguments thrown about both for and against the film are due to the fact that this (reportedly) US$150,000,000 production officially boasts a bisexual hero who not only is the supreme commander of a conquering army, but who also slaughters his [...]