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AFI FEST 2009: THE LAST STATION, AFTER.LIFE

Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Paul Giamatti in The Last Station

AFI FEST 2009, Sat., Nov. 7 at the Santa Monica Laemmle Theater 4 on 2nd Street in Santa Monica.
AFI FEST 2009 comes to a close with the following screenings:

Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, which is set near the end of Leo Tolstoy’s life, has been getting lots of Oscar buzz for its stars: James McAvoy as Tolstoy’s assistant; Helen Mirren as Tolstoy’s wife; and Christopher Plummer as the verbose author of the never-ending War and Peace.
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash’s Sweetgrass offers a look at sheepherding in Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth mountain range. Apart from the sheep and the high peaks, there’s no connection to Brokeback Mountain.
Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s stop-motion [...]

American Film Market 2009

The 30th American Film Market (AFM) to be held in Santa Monica between Nov. 4-11 will screen 445 films in 27 languages, including 73 world premieres and 311 market premieres, to an expected 8,000-plus film buyers and industry professionals from more than 70 countries.
Films making their world and/or market premieres include Get Low (above, top photo), starring Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Robert Duvall (K5 International); Unthinkable, starring Samuel L. Jackson (Sierra Pictures); Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer (HanWay Films); Within The Whirlwind, directed by Marleen Gorris and starring Emily Watson (Telepool GmbH); Coach, starring Hugh Dancy, Liane Balaban and Mamie Gummer (Lightning Entertainment); [...]

FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN: Q&A with Oliver Hirschbiegel

Inspired by a true incident that occurred in Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s, while placing the real-life participants in a fictitious set-up, Five Minutes of Heaven stars Liam Neeson as Alistair Little, the former leader of an Ulster Volunteer Force cell who, as a teenager, shot in the head a young Catholic man, James Griffin, in front of his 11-year-old brother, Joe Griffin (played by British Independent Film Award winner, and Golden Globe and BAFTA nominee James Nesbitt).
Written by Guy Hibbert (who wrote Omagh, winner of the Irish Film & Television Academy’s 2004 best film award) and directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (above right, whose Downfall was nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar), Five Minutes of Heaven explores [...]

Dustin Lance Black and Role Models

The fact that Dustin Lance Black will — at least for the time being — be better known for his sexual activities than for his Milk screenplay says more about our society (or societies, since the thing has gone global) than about Black himself, whose sex life — with or without condoms; with or without a camera — should be his business and nobody else’s.
Some have tried to turn the online leak of Black’s sex photos into something of momentous importance for gay rights, the spread of HIV, etc. In truth, except for Black and his sex partner those photos are irrelevant. Really, will anyone now decide to fight against marriage equality simply because of Black’s sexual life? Will gay [...]

Liam Neeson to Star in CLASH OF THE TITANS

Liam Neeson, 56, whose wife Natasha Richardson died last March 18, is set to begin work on a remake of Clash of the Titans.
Neeson will play Zeus, the ancient Greeks’ top god (Zeus is akin to the Latin Deus, God), a role played by Laurence Olivier in the 1981 film.
Louis Leterrier, of The Incredible Hulk, is set to direct the new version, which is scheduled to begin production in the United Kingdom later this month.
Also in the new Clash of the Titans are Ralph Fiennes playing Hades, ruler of the underworld, Luke Treadaway (of Brothers of the Head), Mads Mikkelsen, Sam Worthington, Gemma Arterton, and Alexa Davalos. This will mark Neeson’s and Fiennes’ first film reunion [...]

TAKEN – Liam Neeson

Taken (2008)
Direction: Pierre Morel
Screenplay: Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen
Cast: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Xander Berkeley, Katie Cassidy, Olivier Rabourdin
 

 

Taken, directed by Pierre Morel and written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, is a remarkably effective action thriller. Liam Neeson stars as Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA agent who quit his job so as to salvage his relationship with his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). Bryan had already sacrificed his marriage to his (by now) ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) and doesn’t want to repeat the same mistake.
After Bryan saves a flippant singer from a would-be attacker, he encounters a situation infinitely more dangerous than his CIA assignments. Though hesitant, Bryan allows Kim to go to Paris with her friend [...]

Irish Film Awards 2005

2005 Irish Film Awards
2005 Irish Film & Television Academy Awards winners: November 5, 2005
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Perry Ogden’s Pavee Lackeen takes a look at poverty in modern Ireland as seen through the eyes of a young girl and her family
 

FILM AWARDS

Best Film
Mickybo & Me
The Mighty Celt
* Pavee Lackeen
Tara Road
Trouble with Sex
Best Director
Anthony Byrne — Short Order
Fintan Connolly — Trouble with Sex
* Terry George — Hotel Rwanda
Perry Ogden — Pavee Lackeen
Best Actor
Gabriel Byrne – Wah-Wah
Cillian Murphy – Red Eye
* Liam Neeson – Kinsey
Aidan Quinn – Convicted
Best Actress
Andrea Corr – The Boys & Girl from County Clare
Jillian Bradbury – Winter’s End
Winnie Maughan – Pavee Lackeen
* [...]

Los Angeles Film Critics Awards 2004

2004 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
2004 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award winners: Dec. 11, 2004
 

 

Best Film: Sideways
Runner-up: Million Dollar Baby
Best Foreign-Language Film: Shi mian mai fu / House of Flying Daggers directed by Zhang Yimou
Runner-up: Diarios de motocicleta / The Motorcycle Diaries directed by Walter Salles
Best Director: Alexander Payne, Sideways
Runner-up: Martin Scorsese, The Aviator
Best Actor: Liam Neeson, Kinsey
Runner-up: Paul Giamatti, Sideways
Best Actress: Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
Runner-up: Julie Delpy, Before Sunset
Best Supporting Actor: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Runner-up: Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby
Best Supporting Actress: Virginia Madsen, Sideways
Runner-up: Cate Blanchett, Coffee & Cigarettes and The Aviator
Best Screenplay: Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, Sideways
Runner-up: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Best Documentary / Nonfiction Film: Born into [...]

KINSEY Notes

Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956) and his wife Clara had four children. Only three are shown in Bill Condon’s biopic Kinsey. Their firstborn, Don, died from diabetes shortly before his fifth birthday. Clara Kinsey died in 1982 at the age of 83.
In the film, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard) is seen seducing Alfred Kinsey. According to Kinsey’s biographers, Kinsey pursued Clyde, who became the researcher’s somewhat reluctant sex partner.
Kinsey never saw his father after his parents divorced. In the film, Kinsey is shown at his father’s home after his mother dies.
Indiana University came up with the money necessary to fund Kinsey’s research after the Rockefeller Foundation withdrew its support due to pressure from right-wing and religious leaders. In the film, the [...]

KINSEY II – Liam Neeson

KINSEY Review: Part I
Like the controversial hero of another biopic, Dustin Hoffman’s Lenny Bruce in Lenny, Kinsey is ostracized because he dares tell the uncomfortable truth to a hypocritical society that wants none of it. But unlike Hoffman’s neurotic and abrasive stand-up comedian, Condon’s Kinsey is an eccentric but wholly likable fellow. And therein lies the film’s biggest flaw.
Since this is a (mostly) American movie, we can accept hunky Liam Neeson playing the role of the hound-faced Alfred Kinsey, a carbon copy of actor Tom Ewell (the quasi-errant husband in The Seven Year Itch). But it is difficult to accept a sex-obsessed hero who is hardly ever shown enjoying the pleasures of sex. Even if Kinsey was more interested in [...]

KINSEY d: Bill Condon

Kinsey (2004)
Direction and screenplay: Bill Condon (There’s a "thank you" credit to Kinsey biographer Johnathan Gathorne-Hardy and his book, Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things)
Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O’Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Lynn Redgrave
 

 

At one point in Kinsey, Liam Neeson’s polemical Dr. Alfred Kinsey tells a reporter that it would be "useless" to make a film of his 1948 tome on male sexuality. Be that as it may, even Kinsey himself would probably have recognized that his difficult, extraordinary life could well be the stuff that great movies are made of. Writer-director Bill Condon surely thinks so, and his Kinsey is an honorable attempt to portray the [...]

Toronto Film Festival 2004

The 2004 Toronto Film Festival will screen 321 features and short films from 61 countries.
Among the festival’s 100 world premieres are Being Julia, starring Annette Bening and directed by István Szabó; David O. Russell’s comedy i heart huckabees, with Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin as a duo of "existential detectives"; and two biopics: Beyond the Sea, directed by Kevin Spacey, who also stars as 1950s-60s singer and actor Bobby Darin, and Kinsey, which stars Liam Neeson as controversial scientist Alfred Kinsey, who created a furor in the postwar years with his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.
Other festival highlights include The Good Woman, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan starring Helen Hunt; Jean-Luc Godard’s Notre musique; [...]

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