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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. [...]

Roman Polanski Petition

Veteran filmmakers Marco Bellocchio, Wim Wenders, and Claude Lelouch; Oscar winners Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, and Pedro Almodóvar; the French Film Academy; the Cannes Film Festival; and hundreds of other individuals and organizations have signed a petition demanding the release of Roman Polanski, who was arrested by Swiss police — at the behest of the American Justice Department — following his arrival at the Zurich airport on Sept. 26. Polanski was headed to the Zurich Film Festival, where he was to have received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1978, Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful intercourse with a minor (13-year-old Samantha Gailey, now Geimer) at a Los Angeles court, but fled to France before he could be sentenced. His court [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Penélope Cruz to Star for Pedro Almodóvar and Woody Allen

Penélope Cruz, Yohana Cobo in Volver

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 the summer.
Spanish Academy Goya winner and Academy Award nominee Penélope Cruz will star in Pedro Almodóvar’s next film, La Piel que habito ("The Skin I Live In").

Important detail: Almodóvar is not 100% sure that his next project will be La Piel que habito. He will, however, make up his mind in the next few weeks.
The inspiration for La Piel que habito is French author Thierry Jonquet’s 1995 noir novel Mygale, which traces several seemingly disparate stories that eventually converge into a tale about a plastic [...]

Goya Awards 2007 Winners

Yohana Cobo, Penélope Cruz in Volver (top); Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero in Pan’s Labyrinth (bottom)

The Spanish Academy’s Goya Awards were presented on Jan. 28. Although best picture winner Volver seemed like an easy pick, it actually faced stiff competition from both Agustín Díaz-Yanes‘ adventure period piece Alatriste and Guillermo del Toro’s dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth.
Ultimately, Volver took home five Goyas: best film, best direction (Pedro Almodóvar), best actress (Penélope Cruz), best supporting actress (Carmen Maura), and best original score (Alberto Iglesias).
Almodóvar, however, failed to win the original screenplay award, which went to Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro’s film, in fact, turned out to be the top Goya winner that evening: seven trophies in all. Among [...]

Goya Awards 2007

2007 Goya Awards
Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 2007 Goya Award nominations: Dec. 18, 2006
2007 Goya Award winners: Palacio Municipal de Congresos del Campo de las Naciones in Madrid on Jan. 28, 2007
Nominees consist of films released in Spain between Dec. 1, 2005, and Nov. 30, 2006.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Penélope Cruz, Yohana Cobo, Lola Dueñas in Volver
 

Best Film / Mejor película
Alatriste, by Agustín Díaz-Yanes (Estudios Picasso Fábrica de Ficción SA, Origen PC SA and NBC Universal Global Network España SL)
El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro (Estudios Picasso Fábrica de Ficción SA, Tequila Gang y Esperanto Filmoj)
Salvador, by Manuel Huerga (Mediapro y Future Films)
* Volver, by Pedro Almodóvar (El deseo DA, [...]

Oscar 2007 Nominations

Penélope Cruz told Academy members to vote for her — or else.
Pedro Almodóvar should have used 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 2007 Academy Awards.
Indeed. Best supporting actress nominee Adriana Barraza (for Babel); best direction nominee Alejandro González Iñárritu, who also happens to be one of the producers of best picture nominee Babel; best original screenplay nominee Guillermo del Toro, whose Pan’s Labyrinth was also nominated in the best foreign-language film category; best adapted screenplay nominee Alfonso Cuarón, one of the screenwriters of Children of Men (which he also directed — [...]

Spanish Film Writers Awards 2007

2007 Spanish Film Writers Circle Awards
2007 Spanish Film Writers Circle Awards: January 16, 2007
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz in Volver
 

Best Film
* Volver, by Pedro Almodóvar
El Laberinto del fauno / Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro
La noche de los girasoles, by Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo
Un franco, 14 pesetas, by Carlos Iglesias
Best Foreign Film
The Queen, by Stephen Frears (UK-France-Italy)
Copying Beethoven, by Agnieszka Holland (US-Germany)
Little Miss Sunshine, by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (US)
* Crash, by Paul Haggis (US)
Best Documentary
* Cineastas en acción, by Carlos Benpar
La leyenda del tiempo, by Isaki Lacuesta
La silla de Fernando, by Luis Alegre and David Trueba
La gran final, by Gerardo [...]

2007 Goya Awards: Nominations

Viggo Mortensen in Alatriste (top); Lola Dueñas, Yohana Cobo, Penélope Cruz in Volver (bottom)

Agustín Díaz Yanes‘ 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 2007 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 million), received a total of 15 nods, while Volver received 14.
Both Alatriste and Volver were nominated for best film, best director, and, respectively, for best adapted screenplay (Alatriste is a cinematic condensation of five novels by Arturo Pérez Reverte) and best original screenplay. (Curiously, Volver failed to get a best editing [...]

2006 National Board of Review Award Winners

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 film award has gone to a non-English-language production. The last time that happened was in 1949, when they picked Vittorio De Sica’s Italian-made neo-realist drama The Bicycle Thief. The year before, another Italian film took the award, Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan.
Based on Japanese Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi’s book Picture Letters from Commander in Chief (adapted for the screen by Iris Yamashita), and starring Ken Watanabe, [...]

European Film Awards 2006

2006 European Film Awards
2006 European Film Award nominations: Seville Film Festival on Nov. 4, 2006
2006 European Film Award winners: EXPO XXI in Warsaw on Dec. 2, 2006. Sophie Marceau and Maciej Stuhr hosted the awards ceremony.
† Eligible films had to be released in their countries of origin between July 2005 and April/May 2006.
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
Photos: JaczekTurczyk/PAP
 

BEST EUROPEAN FILM
BREAKFAST ON PLUTO; Ireland/UK
directed by Neil Jordan
produced by Parallel Film Productions Ltd./Number 9 Films
GRBAVICA; Austria/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Germany/Croatia
directed by Jasmila Zbanic
produced by coop99 filmproduktion GmbH/Deblokada/Noirfilm/Jadran Film
* DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN (The Lives of Others); Germany
directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
produced by Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion/Bayerischer Rundfunk/ARTE/Creado Film
THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO; UK
directed by Michael [...]

2006 European Film Awards Winners

The European Film Academy, whose awards ceremony was held this evening in Warsaw, has opted for conventionality by giving its best European film award to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others, a Cold War spy-thriller-cum-melodrama lacking both thrills and drama.
Additionally, The Lives of Others star Ulrich Mühe (above, top photo), the one saving grace in the film, received the best European actor award for his role as a Stasi spy who, while eavesdropping on a playwright in the mid-1980s, begins to question both his personal ethics and his allegiance to the Communist Party. In real life, Mühe, a renowned stage actor since the 1980s, was himself spied on by East Germany’s [...]

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