Mongol Mongol
Aug
15
2007

John Turturro Self Releasing Romance & Cigarettes

Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 12:21pm.

Posted in Film News , Musical, Drama, USA & Canada, Toronto Film Festival 2005.

With all the TIFF 2007 film announcements that have been pouring in over the past few days, it is curious to hear about a title featuring multitude of big name American actors which has languished undistributed in North America since first showing on these shores in 2005.  Romance & Cigarettes (which was well received in these parts, see link below) was financed by the Coen Brothers and directed by John Turturro (his third film as director). 

“The over-the-top story line follows a Queens construction worker who gets in trouble when his wife discovers he has a lusty mistress. The characters break into songs ranging from James Brown to Engelbert Humperdinck to Bruce Springsteen.”

James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, Mary-Louise Parker, Eddie Izzard and the tragically underused and unknown Bobby Cannavale (who just radiated good natured comraderie in The Station Agent a few years ago then was frighteningly intimidating in Fast Food Nation recently) all singing and dancing in modern day New York.  Sounds like a lot of fun to me.  John Turturro is self-releasing it on a single screen in New York (NY Film Forum) on September 7th (that is almost 2 years to the day since its first festival screening) to see if it has any chance for a wider theatrical release from MGM.  You see, much of the delay was due to the slicing up of MGM a couple of years ago, this one just fell between the cracks of a hacked up corporate entity.  Sony, who has the DVD rights, expects to put out a DVD release sometime in 2008, but for those who do not want to wait (none of you left at this point, unless this is your first time hearing about the film), A British (R2) DVD has been out for some time now.

[Source:  Reuters via Mad About Movies]

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Reader Comments

  1. yipyop 08/15/2007 @ 1:12pm

    I picked up the Region 2 DVD a while back. The movie’s pretty disappointing, not a surprise it got shelved. Watching the big-name stars perform their ridiculous parts is almost embarrassing. Something’s just missing overall. It’s like if a cast acted over the top in reaction to monsters that never got green-screened into the final mix.

  2. oliversourpuss 08/16/2007 @ 6:36am

    I thought it was pretty great.  I mean, it’s a complete mess, pretty incoherent and there’s no real flow to it, but it worked for me.  And the music sequences are great.  It’s also got a couple of really great scenes that I can’t really relate without spoilers.  It’s a bit of an oddity but I really liked it…

  3. Swarez 08/16/2007 @ 9:29am

    Didn’t like this at all.

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