The Jackie Kennedy biopic Jackie, starring Natalie Portman, has been acquired by Fox Searchlight, which plans to push the film directly into the Oscar season. Searchlight announced the acquisiti…
Source: Portman’s Jackie Kennedy film to get Oscar season release
From writer/director Tom Ford comes a haunting romantic thriller of shocking intimacy and gripping tension that explores the thin lines between love and cruelty, and revenge and redemption. Academy Award nominees Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal star as a divorced couple discovering dark truths about each other and themselves in Nocturnal Animals.
A Focus Features presentation of a Fade To Black production. A Tom Ford Film. Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal. Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Karl Glusman, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Sheen. Casting by Francine Maisler, CSA. Costume Designer, Arianne Phillips. Music, Abel Korzeniowski. Film Editor, Joan Sobel, ACE. Production Designer, Shane Valentino. Director of Photography, Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC. Co-Producer, Diane L. Sabatini. Based upon the novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright. Produced by Tom Ford, p.g.a., Robert Salerno, p.g.a. Screenplay by Tom Ford. Directed by Tom Ford. A Focus Features Release.
(Excerpt from Nocturnal Animals Press Notes)
Heartstone, Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson’s debut feature, won the Queer Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. Heartstone was one of ten films from all of the sections of the festival that we…
Source: HEARTSTONE wins Queer Lion Award in Venice
Nepali film Seto Surya (White Sun) directed by Deepak Rauniyar was premiered in the Orizzonti section — an international competition — at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival to much appreciation on September 6.
*Video and photos are courtesy of ASAC Images/Biennale Cinema
It has also won 6th INTERFILM Award for Promoting Interreligious Dialogue under Collateral Awards of the 73rd Venice Film Festival.
“From a shortlist of finally three films the INTERFILM Jury at the 73rd International Film Festival Venice has chosen the winner of the 6th INTERFILM Award for Promoting Interreligious Dialogue.
The jury decided for the Nepalisian film Seta Surya (White Sun) by Deepak Rauniyar which was screened in the Orizzonti section of the festival,” the website of the Award writes.
“It is obviously a moment of joy to be receiving an award at one of the world’s oldest and biggest film festivals of the world. We all are happy,” director Rauniyar expressed to The Himalayan Times via a Facebook interview. Sadly, he wasn’t there to receive the award.
Highway was his first feature film and it also became “the first feature of Nepal to premiere in a major international film festival. Now, White Sun has taken us to another level”.
He has had a deep belief that “Nepali films like other films can be distributed and screened across the audience of the world.
I would be jubilant that day when our films will be distributed easily like other films reach us. My belief has been firm after White Sun was screened at two big film festivals in a gap of four days and the response we got.”
After Venice Film Festival, White Sun had a North American premiere at Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. The 87-minute-film is a story after the country’s civil war.
It features Dayahang Rai, Asha Magrati, Rabindra Singh Baniya, Sumi Malla and Amrit Pariyar among others.
With the win, lead actor Rai feels that “the country and Nepali films have garnered respect”. When the film was well received at the premiere at Venice with a long applause in a hall of more than 1,200 audience, he is on cloud nine.
He shared, “I felt that this is the success for what I have worked till now!” He had also not expected that people would be interested in a Nepali film.
The Festival ran from August 31 to September 10. INTERFILM is the international network for dialogue between church and film promoting the appreciation of cinema’s artistic, spiritual and social significance in the church and calls attention to the relevance of church, theology and religion for cinema.
As festivals are critical for the activities of INTERFILM, it participates in festivals like Venice and award prizes to outstanding films.
(Source:www.thehimalayantimes.com)
Heartstone, Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson’s debut feature, won the Queer Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival. Heartstone was one of ten films from all of the sections of the festival that were eligible for the award. The film also came in second in the voting for Best Film in the Venice Days section.
The Queer Lion Award is awarded to the best film with homosexual and queer culture themes. Regarding their choice of Heartstone for the award, the jury wrote, “For the exquisite touch in showing the coming of age of two young friends and analyzing the acceptance of homosexual feelings and passions. For the strong and valid representation of the inner conflict that separates and then re-unites the two main characters, set against a natural environment as breathtaking as it can be hard and cruel.”
The Queer Lion was awarded this year for the tenth time. Former winners include A Single Man by Tom Ford, Philomena by Stephen Frears and The Danish Girl by Tom Hooper.
Heartstone was one of 11 films invited to participate at Venice Days, where it had its world premiere. This was the first time that an Icelandic film has been selected for Venice Days, a competitive and autonomous section at the Venice Film Festival.
Heartstone now continues its festival run. Next up are the Toronto International Film Festival, the Busan International Film Festival, the Warsaw Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival.
About the film
Heartstone is set in a remote fishing village in Iceland. Teenage boys Thor and Christian experience a turbulent summer as one tries to win the heart of a girl while the other discovers new feelings toward his best friend. When summer ends and the harsh nature of Iceland reclaims its rightful place, it’s time for the boys to leave the playground and face the acrimony of adulthood.
Heartstone was written and directed by Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson. In the last few years, Gudmundsson has garnered considerable notice for his award-winning short films, most notably Whale Valley. Among Whale Valley’s 45 international awards is a special mention in the main competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Heartstone was produced by Anton Máni Svansson and Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson for Join Motion Pictures and Lise Orheim Stender and Jesper Morthorst for the Danish production company SF Studios Production. The film was shot by the Norwegian cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, edited by the Danes Anne Østerud and Janus Billeskov Jansen, and the score was composed by the Dane Kristian Eidnes Andersen. International sales will be handled by the Berlin-based Films Boutique. The film was made with support from the Icelandic Film Centre and the Danish Film Institute.
Heartstone stars the promising young actors Baldur Einarsson, Blaer Hinriksson, Diljá Valsdóttir, Katla Njálsdóttir, Jónína Thórdís Karlsdóttir, Rán Ragnarsdóttir, Daníel Hans Erlendsson, Theodór Pálsson and Sveinn Sigurbjörnsson. The young cast is ably supported by veterans Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir, Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson, Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir, Søren Malling and Gunnar Jónsson.
(Source: http://www.icelandicfilmcentre.is)
Dear Cinephiles,
The indie film “Little Men” was the Critic’s Pick by the New York Times. We’re attaching the review below.
I’m a huge fan of this movie – and director’s Ira Sachs’ work. You may have seen his previous film “Love is Strange.”
This coming of age story is warm and smart – and as the NY Times points out “something richer and harder to classify.” It plays tonight at 5:00pm and tomorrow at 7:30pm at the Riviera Theatre.
See you at the movies!
Roger Durling
Get tickets by clicking here.
In ‘Little Men,’ Boys Develop a Bond That Is Threatened by Money
By A.O. Scott – The New York Times
There is hardly a shortage of buddy movies about mismatched men bonding under duress, but films that chart the emotional weather of everyday male friendship are rare. Literature has more to offer, at least as far as boys are concerned. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have a rich and renewable legacy. And it may be that association that imparts a novelistic vibe to Ira Sachs’s “Little Men,” beyond the Louisa May Alcott echo in the title. It’s a subtle movie, alert to the almost imperceptible currents of feeling that pass between its title characters.
They are Jake Jardine (Theo Taplitz) and Tony Calvelli (Michael Barbieri), two middle schoolers who cross paths in Brooklyn. I almost ended that sentence “and fall in love,” a possibly misleading but not at all inaccurate account of what happens. The childhood bond that the psychologist Harry Stack Sullivan called “chumship” can be as intense and mysterious as romantic love, and can be sparked by the kind of intuitive connection that arises between Jake and Tony when they first meet.
Jake, pale and reserved, is an exile from Manhattan, flung across the East River by the tides of family fortune. His father, Brian (Greg Kinnear), might be described as a struggling actor if it didn’t seem that the fight had mostly gone out of him. He works, but he mostly worries, tries to be a nice guy and feels guilty when he fails at it. Jake’s mother, Kathy (Jennifer Ehle), who is a bit more decisive, is a therapist, and her smiling demeanor acts as a shield against the unspoken tensions hovering in the air whenever she and her husband are together.
The family moves into an apartment that used to belong to Brian’s father, whose death is the movie’s precipitating catastrophe. The old man also owned the building where Tony’s mother, Leonor (Paulina García) runs a dress shop, and if “Little Men” is a love story it is also a tale of economic conflict in a rapidly changing city, a fable about the insidious, toxic power of money and real estate.
Jake’s grandfather is recalled as a big-hearted bohemian of the kind that used to be more plentiful in New York. “He loved me,” Leonor says, perhaps hinting that they were lovers but more pointedly explaining why he charged her so little rent. Brian, urged on by his sister, wants to raise it. As the dispute between them escalates, it casts a shadow over Jake’s relationship with Tony.
All the grown-ups think they are being perfectly reasonable as they dig in their heels and allow a business matter to turn into a personal grudge. None of them can help it; everyone needs money. Their behavior — the politesse that grows increasingly cold, the contempt that seethes among people who believe themselves to be not only right but righteous — is dismaying, but hardly surprising.
It’s also not really the point. Mr. Sachs holds the adults at arm’s length, declining either to judge them too harshly for their selfishness or to extend them more than minimal sympathy for their difficulties. In other words, “Little Men” is on the side of Jake and Tony, as both a narrative strategy and a moral choice. Their temperaments and backgrounds are different, as are their interests. Jake is a hothouse flower, his artistic talents and sensitivities carefully cultivated by his parents. Tony, whose father travels for work and is almost never at home (Hernan, a friend of Leonor’s played by Alfred Molina, is around a lot), is more of a free-range kid. He’s gregarious and easygoing and dreams of being an actor. The two boys conceive a plan to apply to a specialized arts high school together.
When parents are around, “Little Men” feels like a modest, precise drama of urban life, but when it follows Tony and Jake, absorbing the loose rhythms of their companionship, the film becomes something richer and harder to classify. It’s a boys adventure story edged with unspoken risks, and the young actors take the kind of chances that their more careful and disciplined elders have been trained to avoid. There are inklings of sexual desire between the boys and implications of homophobia in the world around them, but mostly there is a sense of discovery and change, of all the unruly and enigmatic experiences often collapsed into the phrase “coming-of-age.”
There is also a protest against the banal imperatives of maturity, and above all against the ways that adults ignore and discount the emotional lives of the young. Kathy, Brian and Leonor would do anything for their sons except take their relationship seriously, and the possibility that something as precious and real as friendship could be sacrificed because of money registers as a profound insult.
And also as a fact of life. Mr. Sachs, in his last three features — this one, “Love Is Strange” and “Keep the Lights On” — has refined a style of emotional realism that stands out against both the mumbly diffidence and the sociological scorekeeping of too much independent American cinema. “Little Men” only looks like a small movie.
Posted by Larry Gleeson
By Roberts Naas
This weekend marked the close of the 73rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival. Swiss watch brand Jaeger-LeCoultre has been a partner of the cinema event for a dozen years and is firmly entrenched in honoring film and the ancient city of Venice. In fact, for the past three yeas, the brand has been an active supporter of Venice restoration, assisting with restoring the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, which houses numerous paintings by 16th-century artist, Tintoretto. This year, to honor the restoration effort, as well as to celebrate the brand’s 85th anniversary of the famed Reverso, Jaeger-LeCoultre presented multiple new Reverso timepieces – including a unique hand-painted watch that depicts the restoration inside the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.
The one-of-a-kind Reverso Grande Taille watch features a miniature enamel rendition of the main marble staircase inside the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The hand painting of the Reverse side of the case – done completely iin-housein the brand’s rare handcrafts division – took three weeks to complete. The dial required multiple layers of paintings, 32 drying processes and 15 firings of the kiln at 800°C. The watch is so beautiful and unique that it will not be sold at this point in time. Instead, it will be housed in the brand’s heritage museum in Switzerland.
To further support the restoration cause, Jaeger-LeCoultre has also implemented several initiatives. Until September 15, for every visitor to the brand’s facebook page who likes the post about the hand-painted watch, a donation will be made by the brand to the restoration program.
There was also a signing in Venice during the film festival, wherein anyone who signed the guest book with a heart drawing included, the brand would also donate to the cause. To kick off that initiative, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s brand ambassador Carmen Chaplin (of Charlie Chaplin descent) drew a heart that was engraved on the back of a Reverso watch.
Posted by Larry Gleeson
By Jamie Manelis
Fans swarmed the premiere of Hacksaw Ridge like starstruck bees to an illustrious honeyhive. Extra security flooded the theatre, escorting fans straight to their seats to protect some of Hollywood’s most revered stars. The film itself is an overwhelming masterpiece. Intentionally and with much success, Gibson juxtaposes the horrific scenes of war with the innocent protagonist, played by Andrew Garfield. Based on a true story, Hacksaw Ridge is about the first Seventh-Day conscientious objector, Desmond Doss, who declined to bear arms. A belief that almost sent him to military prison, but he not only persevered with his faith, he proved the military wrong and single-handedly saved 75 lives in one night. Regardless of any religious affiliation the audience may identify with, the real astonishment is Doss’s naive optimism and selflessness. Gibson is like a seasoned puppeteer, pulling each tiny string with precision and purpose, manipulating any audience into trusting humanity.
“I enjoy directing more…maybe I’m a megalomanic, I just love telling the story and I love to see the story the way I see it.” – Mel Gibson
Although Gibson’s name in the news has sparked controversy in the last ten years, journalists at the press conference neglected to ask him about his personal afflictions and only focused on questions of the film and his future. However, when Gibson was asked if he preferred acting or directing, he responded, “I enjoy directing more…maybe I’m a megalomanic, I just love telling the story and I love to see the story the way I see it.” Although the stories he chooses are directly linked to religion as Gibson is a devout Catholic, he explained that this story isn’t completely about faith. “He (Doss) didn’t regard his life to be any more valuable than his brothers…that’s the greatest expression of love.”
(Source: Excerpt from http://www.observer.com)
*Featured photo courtesy of ASAC Images/Biennale Cinema
Posted by Larry Gleeson
A nearly four-hour long movie about a woman’s thirst for revenge and her feelings of forgiveness after 30 years in jail for a crime she did not commit won the Venice Film Festival’s top prize on Saturday.
Director Lav Diaz has described “Ang Babaeng Humayo” (“The Woman Who Left”) as a testimony to the struggles of the Philippines after centuries of colonial rule.
“This is for my country, for the Filipino people, for our struggle, for the struggle of humanity,” the 57-year-old said as he accepted the Golden Lion award for his black-and-white movie.
Diaz, who at the Berlin Film Festival in February had premiered a film that ran over eight hours, said he hoped the latest recognition would create more appreciation for longer movies.
“Cinema is still very young, you can still push it,” he said.
Twenty U.S. and international movies featuring top Hollywood talent and auteur directors were in competition at the world’s oldest film festival, in its 73rd outing this year. The event is seen as a launching pad for the industry’s award season.
All the movies that won awards were examples of directors’ “lack of compromise, (their) imagination, original vision, daring, and a kind of pure identity,” said Sam Mendes, known for directing James Bond movies “Skyfall” and “Spectre”, who headed the jury. “It’s taken me out of my comfort zone.”
Mendes said he hoped the awards would help the films get distributed.
The runner-up Grand Jury prize went to Tom Ford’s thriller “Nocturnal Animals”, the second feature by the celebrated fashion designer.
The Best Director award was shared by Russia’s Andrei Konchalovsky for the Holocaust drama “Rai” (“Paradise”) and Mexico’s Amat Escalante for “La Region Salvaje” (“The Untamed”).
Commenting on Escalante’s drama, which opens with a naked woman being pleasured by a tentacled creature, jury member and Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas said the movie affected all the judges emotionally.
“We liked the lack of sentimentalism. We felt he really took risks making the film. It’s a film that pushes the medium forward,” he said.
American Emma Stone took the Best Actress prize for her role in the musical “La La Land” and Argentine actor Oscar Martinez was named Best Actor for his performance in the comedy-drama “El Ciudadano Ilustre” (“The Distinguished Citizen”).
German actress Paula Beer received the Marcello Mastroianni Award acknowledging an emerging performer, for her role in post-war drama “Frantz”.
Noah Oppenheim took the best screenplay award for his work on Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie”, about first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the aftermath of the assassination of her husband U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
The special jury prize went to Ana Lily Amirpour’s cannibal-survivor fairytale “The Bad Batch”. While the film earned mixed reviews, the jury appreciated its spirit.
“Someone has made a very individual, very personal vision, whatever you think of it; that alone, the act of making that film is astonishing,” Mendes said.
(Additional reporting by Sarah Mills and Hanna Rantala, Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Richard Chang)
(Source: http://www.reuters.com)
*Featured photo courtesy of ASAC Images/Biennale Cinema/Hazel Orencio
September 11, 2016
Russian film director Andrei Konchalovsky has been awarded the Silver Lion — the Leone d’Argento — award for best direction at the 73rd Venice Film Festival.
An international panel led by British director Sam Mendes said on September 10 that Konchalovsky won the award for his film Paradise.
Paradise reveals entangled human life stories during World War II.
Konchalovsky’s wife, actress Yulia Vysotskaya, played the leading role in the film of a Russian emigre named Olga who is sent to a Nazi concentration camp after giving shelter to Jewish children in Paris.
It was the second Silver Lion from the Venice festival for Konchalovsky. He received the award in 2014 for his film The Postman’s White Nights.
The top prize at the Venice festival, the Golden Lion for best film, went to The Woman Who Left by director Lav Diaz.
(Source: http://www.rferl.org)
