Review: Yella
Christian Petzold, proud member of the "Berlin School" of young German filmmaking, won the Silver Bear with the moody tale of a rootless woman who joins forces with a roving venture capitalist. Yella is a richly textured allegory of lust, greed, loneliness, and desire set in the rural East of Germany. It also features a mesmerizing lead performance by Nina Hoss (also awarded with a Silver Bear) and the most obvious, superfluous, and all-around maddening trick ending in memory. Yella opens today at Cinema Village. Read Jürgen's review.
Worldfilm Roundup: Cannes-demonium
At his new hangout, Glenn Kenny reports on Jack Black's Kung Fu Panda shenanigans -- and the gruesome aftermath. More Cannes updates from GreenCine Daily: Blindness, Waltz with Bashir, Four Nights with Anna, and Lion's Den. If you time it right, you can watch the red carpet arrivals at IFC's Cannes Cam -- and we have a photo gallery from the Blindness premiere. Oh, and Angelina is having, uhm, twins.Legendary German director Werner Herzog is everywhere these days. His new film Encounters at the End of the World is about to open at Film Forum, he just announced a remake of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage in the Harvey Keitel role, and now Gregg Goldstein brings news that he's going to collaborate with David Lynch on My Son, My Son, "a horror-tinged murder drama based on a true story." In the same item, we also learn that Lynch will also be producing Alejandro Jodorwosky's "metaphysical gangster movie" King Shot, starring Asia Argento, Udo Kier, and Nick Nolte.
Online viewing: Chris Ware's latest animation for This American Life, Isabella Rosselini's Green Porno, and ad-supported streaming movies on Jaman.
Blindness to Open Cannes 08
The 61th Annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off tomorrow on the French Riviera with Blindess by Fernando Meirelles' (City Of God, The Constant Gardener). Based on a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer José Saramago, the science fiction fable stars Julianne Moore as an ophthalmologist's wife who ends up as the last survivor with sight in a city racked by an onset of mass vision loss. The international cast also includes Mark Ruffalo, Sandra Oh, Gael Garcia Bernal, Don McKellar and Alice Braga. (An exclusive clip can be viewed on the LA Times website.)
This year's festival showcases 57 feature lengths films from 31 countries. As expected, their will be big Hollywood premieres, bringing a parade of celebrities to the red carpet. Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes its premiere at Cannes, as well as Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz, a romantic comedy that is rumored to be the director's most erotic film to date.
Twenty-two films have been selected to screen in this year's competition. The highlights are many: two-time Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are back with The Silence of Lorna; Steven Soderbergh's Che, a two-part double feature starring Benicio Del Toro as revolutionary icon Che Guevara; A Christmas Tale by French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen), starring the legendary Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric; screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synecdoche, New York with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theater director; Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's Adoration, a tale of the relationship between teens and new technology starring Scott Speedman of Felicity fame; Wim Wender's thriller/romanceThe Palermo Shooting, starring Milla Jovovich, Dennis Hopper and Italian actress Giovanna Mezzogiono; from China, Jia Zhangke's 24 City; and Clint Eastwood's prohibition drama Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie as a mother whose child vanishes in Los Angeles.
Oscar-winning actor and director Sean Penn is leading the luminous nine-member jury that will select this year's Palme D'or winner. The jury also includes Natalie Portman, Alfonso Cuaron, Sergio Castellitto, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Alexandra Maria Lara. German director Fatih Akin will award the best film in the Cannes film festival's Un Certain Regard, which focuses on the works of emerging filmmakers.
The festival runs from May 14-25.
Summer Movie Trailers
There's more to summer than Indiana Jones' Crystal Skull, the Dark Knight's Bat Bike, and Iron Man (though we, too, love Robert Downey Jr.) Summer films also means exciting new world and independent releases: Julianne Moore gets fresh with her son in Savage Grace (pictured), Monica Ali's best-selling novel Brick Lane comes to the big screen, and Asia Argento is scarier than ever in her father Dario's The Mother of Tears, which caps his "Three Mothers" trilogy. Check our June preview and the movie trailers page for more.
Summer Movie Trailers:
Review: The Fall
It's a crazy film. Tarsem Singh's The Fall is a children's fairytale, never mind the fact that it's rated R. Shot all over the world, it's got candy colored action scenes featuring masked men in ridiculous, garish costumes. What, I thought, initially, am I watching? And why? But my cynicism was steadily broken down, completely undone by a five-year-old Romanian actress named Catinca Untaru. The Fall opens today. Read Marcy's review.
New DVDs: Dans Paris, I'm Not There, Delirious
Cinephiles take note: a few of the best and most shamefully overlooked films of 2007 are out this week on DVD. Don't miss Christophe Honoré's homage to the New Wave, the moving Dans Paris. Todd Haynes's I'm Not There takes on Bob Dylan in six different ways, including one of the final performances by Heath Ledger. Independent filmmaker Tom Dicillo's Delirious, starring Michael Pitt, Steve Buscemi, and Alison Lohman, tells the unexpectedly charming romance between a homeless paparazzo and pop star.
Interview: Isild Le Besco on Directing Charly
An unusual and arresting coming of age story, Isild Le Besco's Charly just made its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca film festival. While primarily known as an actress (A Tout De Suite, The Untouchable), Charly is Le Besco's second feature film as writer and director. Marcy talked to Le Besco.
Tribeca Review: War, Inc.
Josh Seftel's satire War, Inc. is set in the so-called future, where corporations, not governments, run the world -- and the wars. The ridiculously likable John Cusack stars as Brand Hauser, a CIA hit man with a conscience sent to war-torn nation of Turaqistan to kill a dignitary, run a trade show, and orchestrate a celebrity wedding. The cast also includes Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley, and Hillary Duff, who's terrific as teenage pop princess Yonica Babyyeah. War, Inc. premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and there are three more showing this weekend. The film also opens in theaters on May 23. Read Marcy's review.
Buzz Aldrin at the 40th Anniversary Screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Forty earth years have passed since the Star Child first floated into view at the mind blowing climax of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and to celebrate the anniversary, the Tribeca Film Festival put on a special screening followed by an extraordinary panel consisting of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, screenwriter Ann Druyan, artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky, and actor Matthew Modine. Jürgen was there.
New DVDs: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Guatemalan Handshake, The Living End
We've got three exciting DVDs to recommend this week: Julian Schnabel's brilliant, Oscar-nominated The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the idiosyncratic indie release The Guatemalan Handshake and Greg Araki's groundbreaking AIDS road film The Living End, freshly remastered and remixed.