A note to aspiring film makers: films populated entirely with horrible people are not generally a good time to sit through, no matter how well made they may be. Sure, there are exceptions, films with characters so bad that you get the vicarious thrill of living through them or films that pack a serious emotional catharsis generally, but for the most part it’s a pretty tough road to walk. Make those horrible characters all incredibly passive and self absorbed and you’ve got two big strikes against you.
And, with that, welcome to Cold Lunch, the debut feature from Norway’s Eva Sorhaug with a stellar cast of Norway’s best and brightest - including the first major screen role for Uno and Hawaii, Oslo star Aksel Hennie in a few years - playing horribly self absorbed people who just generally can’t seem to be bothered to make their lives - or anyone else’s, for that matter - any better.
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For lovers of both the whimsical freeform and bittersweet intimate films of Studio Ghibli (My Neighbor Tortoro and Grave of the Fireflies for instance), there will be a lot to love in So Yong Kim‘s semi-autobiographical childhood film Treeless Mountain. It makes a finely articulated plea for the rejuvenating aspects of simple living over urban malaise; but more importantly, it is a showcase for the fragile dignity of children.
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Historically speaking the World War II film has been all but over run by the holocaust. This is not necessarily a bad thing and certainly not a criticism, there are important stories to tell there and lots of them. It does mean, however, that a good number of other stories, all of them important in their own ways, have generally been pushed to the side and forgotten. Enter Danish director Ole Christian Madsen and his Danish resistance film Flame and Citron to bring one of those neglected pieces of history to life.
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The latest from hugely acclaimed Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been hailed as a major departure for the man behind existential horror gems such as Cure and Kairo (Pulse). And in most ways it is, Kurosawa seeming to have wrapped up the horror phase of his career with Sakebi (Retribution). Tokyo Sonata leaves the genre trappings behind entirely, operating instead as a low key family drama but if you leave the genre issue aside it is pure, one hundred percent recognizable Kurosawa and a sort of spiritual successor to Bright Future - a more mature, farther down the road of life look at the same issues of identity and purpose (or lack thereof) that drove his earlier hit film.
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The pairing of The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (1967, 26 minutes, black & white and color, English) and The Embassy (1973, 21 minutes, color, English) on a single DVD might be the curious viewer’s best entry point into Chris Marker’s filmography.The Sixth Side of the Pentagon is a high-adrenaline piece of agit-prop documenting mass-protests at the United States Pentagon on October 21, 1967 that culminated in the now-famous attempt to “levitate” the Pentagon. The Embassy, on the other hand, uses fiction to comment on the politics of the ‘60s
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The dual release of Alexander Medvedkin’s Happiness (1934, 64 minutes, black and white) and Chris Marker’s The Last Bolshevik (1993, 2 x 60 minutes, black & white and color, separate English and French audio tracks) from Icarus Films will probably be the most comprehensive overview of the life and work of Alexander Medvedkin that will ever exist. Happiness is Medvedkin’s key work and Marker’s documentary provides the context necessary to understand the film’s special place within the history of Russian cinema. The hours of material presented on these two DVDs is dense but anyone who spends the time to absorb what is presented will be rewarded with some of the most engaging cinema to appear anywhere in 2008.
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So, I’m about to disappear into the vortex of the Toronto International Film Festival, which will eat waking moment of my time for the next two weeks or so, but before I disappear, here’s a bit of news too good to not mention.
That there are a host of Chuck Palahniuk novels wending their way through development to become feature films is not exactly news. At one point - I believe shortly before Rant was published - it was widely reported that every single book the Fight Club author had written had been optioned by someone, somewhere, and the only real question was which would come first. Two answers.
One, Francis Lawrence is currently working on Survivor. Also not exactly news, but a fact that makes me happy. It’s one of my favorites and I think Lawrence will do well with it.
Two, a mystery Swede has got the green light for Lullaby. He’s not exactly a mystery, in that Palahniuk was quite happy to share the news with JoBlo, it’s just that they don’t know how to spell his name. Again, this makes me happy. Lullaby should make the transition to the screen rther easily, it’s a cracking read, and I think that the Nordic film sensibility should mesh exceptionally well with Palahniuk’s very dry, very morbid sense of humor. Bring it ...
Ignore the fact that this premise in Hollywood hands would inevitable result in mawkish sentimentality and bad slapstick. Ignore also the bad title, which has virtually no relationship to the film’s original moniker. Hans Steinbichler’s Der Zweite Frau is as impeccably crafted and beautifully performed a piece of work as you’ll see among the three hundred or so titles in this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, a finely wrought bit of work that impresses on all levels.
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After the cult success of Rian Johnson‘s debut feature, the stylish high-school noir, Brick, A-list stars and a much bigger budget were sure to follow. The Brothers Bloom was filmed in a variety European and North American locations and things look fabulously bright and breezy on the big screen. Unfortunately, a mild case of the sophomore slump is in place, as the new con artist caper film never quite lives up to the promise of its opening moments and gets mired down a bit by cleverness for cleverness sake. It would be unfair to tag the film with the hubris of Guy Richie’s Revolver because it seems clear that Johnson was aiming for a whimsical light-hearted touch, but the film unfortunately does share glossy posturing and pseudo intellectual chest thumping whilst simultaneously lacking any desired emotional (or intellectual) payoff. Things are fun enough while the film unspools, but there is no sense of click (while there was with Brick) and the whole affair is simply forgettable by the time the end credits have finished rolling.
The film opens very promising however. A delightful voice-over narration from magician extraordinaire Ricky Jay, whose interesting speech rhythms (on display in most David Mamet films, but also in the opening set-up for P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia) set the stage for the bubbly confidence caper film to follow. An image of an amputee kitten pushing itself in a roller skate along the candy-coloured main street in small town America makes things clear that the tonal territory is more Terry Gilliam than David Gordon Green. I suspect the folks who hate the recent onslaught of quirk in film, (for instance, the scene in The Life Aquatic where the crew deal with the Philippine pirates) will be sharpening their knives for The Brothers Bloom in the same way that Juno felt the quirk backlash.
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To date from the 65th Venice Film Festival we have shown you Coffin Joe, Fabrice Du Welz, Kaiju and now Hayao Miyazaki! A super size image of him at the festival today is at the link below and several more added super size images from Ponyo On The Cliff. Hayao Miyazaki was at Venice screening his latest work and proclaiming his steadfast and unending love for non-computer animation. He told reporters after the Ponyo screening:
“I think animation is something that needs the pencil, needs man’s drawing hand, and that is why I decided to do this work in this way. Currently computer graphics are of course used a great deal and, as I’ve said before, this use can at times be excessive. I will continue to use my pencil as long as I can.”
More from Silvia Aloisi of Reuters
Three trailers and still not a bad thing to say about it. It’s upcoming Russian naval epic Admiral Kolchak, starring Night Watch‘s Konstantine Khabensky. What is there to say about it? Large scale action? Check. Strong cast? Check. Impressive cinematography? Check. Time devoted to characters and environment as well as action? Check? Really, it looks like this thing is hitting everything you need to hit to do a large scale epic right. You can check all three trailers below the break.
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I’m not really sure why but the initial teaser for Aleksandr Melnik’s New Land didn’t quite work for me. The storyline was compelling enough, there were some familiar - and welcome - faces in the cast, and the script is from the same pen as recent epic Mongol so i felt like I should like it but it just wasn’t clicking. Well, enough of that and on to the new trailer, just passed our way by regular reader Vladimir. This one? Yeah, this one works. The film is essentially an adult Lord of the Flies and this one packs the sort of tension that such a story needs.
Near future. The death penalty was abolished worldwide, prisons are overcrowded. More and more funds needed for the maintenance of convicts to life imprisonment. International organizations decide to make an experiment. Russia provides an uninhabited island in the north, where a small settlement is developed. The first prisoners from Russia come to island. They must start a new life and arrange their own society. However, the settlers begin to live by the law: “last is dead”.
You can check both trailers in the Twitch Player below the break.
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Vinyan, a film we have been covering fairly thorough here at Twitch, had its world premiere today at the 65th Venice Film Festival. Reviews and comments should start streaming in over the course of the next 24-48 hours. At the moment we have Neil Smith from the BBC talking to Fabrice Du Welz and Emmanuelle Beart (here) and a rather grumpy take on the film by Andrew Pulver at the Guardian (here). I expect Vinyan to be somewhat divisive as its rumored to be a very strong and emotional film told with cracking and feverish intensity. Basically anyone walking into expecting to see something like Bogart in The Africa Queen will probably be disappointed. Strongly told films tend to cause strong reactions.
Super size images from the world premiere at the link below.
Hmm, now this could be interesting. More of a clip than an actual trailer and loaded with over-the-top, hyper-frenetic editing in the early going, we’ve just had a reader load the first trailer for Igor Voloshin’s Nirvana in the Video Player and there’s some intriguing stuff at play there. The film is the story of a love triangle between a Russian nurse and her neighbor, a heroin junkie, and on of their boyfriends and - according to the uploader - it may well have some sort of cyberpunk angle to it. What I do know for sure is that the cinematography on this is spectacular. Now I’d just like to see a little bit more of it where characters are given a bit more space to breath ...
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Argentina is the up and coming nation of South American film these days, producing not only a huge volume of genre film these days but also a good amount of serious drama thanks to a growing indie scene. And coming out of that scene is Liliana Paolinelli’s Proper Eyes, an intimate drama revolving around a group of college women shooting a documentary film about prisoner’s wives. The trailer looks to be exceptionally well shot, very intimate stuff with a strong cast. Very nice. Check it below the break.
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