There is no denying the fall beauty in Thomas Vinterberg’s drama, The Hunt. There is no denying that Mads Mikkelsen gives a major performance as the kindergarten volunteer who gets ostracized from his small community when a young child (falsely) accuses him of inappropriate touching. Yet I still had some issues when I saw the film at TIFF last year. You can decide for yourself from the new trailer, below.
“Time to meet the devil.” is spoken as red filters abound in this International trailer for Nicholas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives which offers promises of the exotic, the lurid and the quite violent. A vampy Kristen Scott Thomas calls for vengeance with extreme F-bomb prejudice while guns are fired, kick-boxing is going on in the background and other tightly coiled tensions unwind. Hey Girl! This film has Ryan Gosling in it.
And this international French one courtesy of Twitchfilm is tucked under the seat.
Has Australia been quietly re-inventing itself with R-rate crime flicks? After the Edgerton Brothers’ The Square and David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, both of which were exported and successful on these shores. Less stressful abroad, but no less harrowing were Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown Murders and Jon Hewitt’s X. Four films over a three year span hardly makes a trend, but then, here comes this strange, slightly noir-ish, vacation-gone-very-wrong film, Wish You Were Here.
Four friends indulge in a carefree Cambodian holiday, but their sun-soaked retreat quickly takes a horrific turn when one of the travelers disappears. As the search ensues, the others return home, racked with guilt and struggling to return to their daily lives. Does one of them hold the answer to the fate of their lost companion? Tightly-held secrets from their life-altering trip are brought to light, revealing clues to the whereabouts of their missing friend.
The film I regret missing the most during last years Fantasia festival was Ron Morales’ Graceland, which premiered in the Contemporary Filipino Cinema the day I was on the train coming back to Toronto. Well, Drafthouse films has picked it up and cut a tense trailer for the film that has been drawing breathless comparisons to Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Not a film comparison one should toss about lightly. I’m not looking to see this even more, as the trailer confirms that the picture straddles the line between gritty and quite handsome.
Baran Bo Odar’s 2010 moody German thriller, The Silence, is getting very limited U.S. release in March. In light of this, an atmospheric, Memories Of Murder-esque trailer has dropped on the internets. This thing looks masterfully shot. Check it out.
23 years ago on a hot summer day, a girl is brutally murdered in a field of wheat. In the present day, on the exact same date, 13-year-old Sinikka is missing, her bicycle abandoned in the same spot, leading police to suspect the same killer may be at work again. A recently widowed detective David and his colleague Janna struggle to solve the mystery of these parallel crimes with the help of the retired investigator of the unresolved case. While Sinikka’s distraught parents are trapped in an agonizing period of waiting and uncertainty, their daughter’s fate rips open unhealed wounds in the heart of the mother of the original girl.
The Lincoln Festival of Japanese Culture is a celebration of Japanese film, music, art, food and much more. Lincoln (UK) based Blueprint: Film Foundation are putting on the event with additional funding from the Japan Society and Lincoln BIG to celebrate Japanese culture and share it with the Lincolnshire community.
The main event is being held on the 27th January at ‘The Venue’ in Bishop Grosseteste University College and will centre around the screening of 2 films, anime classic Akira and Shōhei Imamura’s groundbreaking crime-comedy-drama Pigs and Battleships (tickets now available) alongside traditional Japanese live music, martial arts demonstrations, art, food and drink. The screening of Pigs and Battleships, which will be closing the event, will also be accompanied by a talk from acclaimed Japanese cinema expert, Jasper Sharp.
I know, I know. Snow White seems so long ago with Tarsem and Twi-White duking it out last spring. But there is one more coming out of Spain in a few months, Blancanieves. This one is Black and White and Silent, so language is simply not a barrier, but culturally it gets away with far more in the visual department being way more Grimm than Disney. More importantly it centres around Bullfighting.
It is inevitable that this film be compared to last years Best Picture Winner The Artist due to the old-style, but this one is far more invested in silent filmmaking at the technical level; German Expressionism plays a fair part in its baroque visual stylings which are laced with hints of Georges Méliès. I caught it at TIFF in September and loved its craft, even if it never melted my heart. Noteworthy also is the evil stepmother who is played by Y Tu Mamá También and Pan’s Labyrinth star, Maribel Verdú.
I love myself a good old-school samurai film (I even ranked ‘em once). I also love westerns. Since these two have borrowed from each other for decades now (all right, mostly it was everyone else stealing from Kurosawa), it came as little surprise when it was announced a while back that Ken Watanabe was set to star in a samuraiized remake of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. As you may remember, Watanabe was in the Eastwood-directed Letters from Iwo Jima. This, of course, means nothing, but like the nonsense the football analysts on ESPN spew, some might find the loose connection interesting.
Still, despite loving samurai movies and westerns and Ken Watanabe, I quickly forgot about it – that is until today, when the Japanese teaser trailer for it began making its way around the internet. While it lacks subtitles so I do not understand the narration, I do understand the international language of beautiful filmmaking and badass samurai.
Director Sang-il Lee is probably best known for 2006′s Hula Girls. His remake of the Eastwood classic, according to Twitch, follows a man who is a “raditional thinker holding to his samurai code – despite the shifting standards of the late 1800s – who takes a job as a bounty killer.”
I’m digging what I see. How about you?
I has been far too long since 2007′s My Blueberry Nights which saw art-house favourite director Wong Kar Wai make his first English language feature films, to mixed results (albeit I feel it is severely underrated.) In the ensuing time, if you discount perfume commercials and short films, wkw has been toiling away with his biopic on Ipman, The Grandmasters, long enough to see at least 4 Yip man films come along (most of these starring Donnie Yen.) Expected open Cannes, last may, we are finally getting the first significant look at the film starring the Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi. And if you are a fan of slow motion raindrops and brooding facial expressions, then this teaser is for you.
According to Wikipedia, The Grandmasters is set for a wide release in Hong Kong and China on December 18, 2012.
With its collection of strange visuals and a toe tapping soundtrack, it is probably safe to say that if you like your cinema on the weird side, you are going to want to run to the nearest arthouse when Holy Motors drops in. Leaving audiences on the festival circuit delighted and baffled, it is already headed for full on cult-status.
Early on in his filmmaking career, Jean Renoir struggled to find critical success and financial stability. Whether forced to sell the paintings passed down to him from his father, Impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir, to cover his debts or subjected to mixed audience reactions and considerable cuts made to his films, he had to face many uncertain years before reaching the success and respect he would enjoy later in his life. His 1936 adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths gave him a helpful boost in that direction, earning him the very first Louis Delluc Prize and positive results from both critics and the box office. Additionally, it was his first collaboration with French star Jean Gabin, who would work with Renoir again in such notable films as La bête humaine, Grand Illusion, and French Cancan.
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Within the immense gallery of great French films, Children of Paradise stands out like a grand mural painted with many colors, bold brush strokes, and precise attention to detail. Directed by the great Marcel Carné and written by his regular collaborator Jacques Prévert, it is an ambitious feat of cinema; a period piece set in Paris in the 1820s and ‘30s that seemed to have all the odds against its creation. Its production slowly progressed throughout the German occupation of France during World War II, which made film stock and construction material for the sets in short supply. The project served as a fortuitous hiding place for Resistance fighters who worked throughout the shoot as extras while two more central figures, production designer Alexandre Trauner and composer Joseph Kosma, had to made their contributions covertly due to their Jewish roots (in the cut presented on the Criterion Collection DVD, they share a special title card at the end of the opening credits). Following France’s liberation, the film was finally released in 1945, its three-hour running time split into two parts entitled The Boulevard of Crime and The Man in White due to a restriction on film duration at the time.
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