Film Festival Circuit 2011

[Peacock]

Lav Diaz's latest A CENTURY OF BIRTHING will be premiering at Venice.

Goes without saying that if you want to see this officially, that this will be one of the few chances you get (along with Toronto later in the year) as none of his feature films so far have official releases (unless the one-hour Butterflies Have no Memories counts as a feature)

[rohmerin]

According to Spanish reviews, W.E is nothing, it is like an expensive perfum tv spot full of posh places and trendy vintage costumes. The Spanish critic says that Weinstein is going to release this film and He said to Madonna that she's a good film director but should have eye glasses.

Polanski and Clooney have delighted to Mr Boyero.

[MichaelB]

Sight & Sound's Kieron Corless on the British contingent (mainly).

[ianungstad]

Just scanned Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire. They all had negative reviews for W.E.

Much like the Spanish reviews, the common refrain seems to be that it's pretty to look at (especially the costumes) but poorly written and soulless.

[ianungstad]

The first reviews for A Dangerous Method are starting to pop up. The film is getting excellent reviews so far.

[Duncan Hopper]

Really? Most of the ones I've read call it mediocre.

[ianungstad]

The first reviews that started appearing online from Todd McCarthy, etc. were quite positive. It does look like it was a much more mixed reception though.

[ianungstad]

Steve McQueen's Shame has been getting rave reviews. Hopefully it gets picked up for distribution and released in the near future. Loved Hunger.

Chicken with Plums is apparently a disappointment. For a film that has some dark subject matter and explores existential issues, you don't want to see reviews that call your film twee, shallow, and saccharin. Indiewire sums the film up by calling it an art house film for the Chocolat crowd. I liked Persepolis. Will probably still catch Chicken with Plums...was really hoping that they would knock it out of the ball park. Seems like it's a poor year for foreign language films at Venice.

The latest from Solondz, Dark Horse; is getting bad reviews (on Twitter at least, haven't seen any published reviews yet). I love Todd, so this is unfortunate. From what I understand, this was his attempt at trying to make a more mainstream film that would play to a broad audience. Early reviews say that it's all a bit too toothless. One review said it felt more like a failed HBO pilot than a feature.

[Gustave Minda]

Really interested to see the reception to Ami Canaan Mann's Texas Killing Fields. The Robbery Homicide Division episode she directed was certainly one of my favorites of the series. Wonder how much artistic input her father has in it and whether there'll be similarities to Manhunter.

[Cold Bishop]

I believe Michael Mann stepped in after test screenings, and has been helping her punch up the film in the editing room.

[ianungstad]

Early reviews for Wuthering Heights are coming in. It's looking good. A few twitter comments:

My favourite of the festival so far,” raved Oliver Lyttelton on The Playlist. “It should also be said that Andrea Arnold has made a better Terrence Malick film than Terrence Malick did this year.”

Jon Barrenechea chimed in “Andrea Arnold’s WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a towering masterpiece only tarnished by the use of a song in the final minutes. Amazing.”

[Finch]

Xan Brooks gave it 3 stars out of 5 in his capsule review. It definitely sounds more appealing than the lifeless shite that Merchant Ivory used to churn out.

[knives]

I wouldn't call the Merchant Ivory stuff lifeless. In fact I have a lot of fun with their strange minimalism.

[ianungstad]

The new outing from William Friedkin and Tracy Letts "Killer Joe" is getting excellent reviews at Venice. (only negative review I've seen is from Variety, which still managed to say a lot of good things about the pic in spite of some reservations)

I didn't think Bug quite worked as a film but I have a lot of admiration for it. Ashley Judd goes for broke in Bug, delivering a powerhouse performance that manages to impress but also baffle the viewer. Tracy's writing has a lot of humor beneath it's pathos and Judd seems oblivious to the element of humor/camp that's woven into the story. I thought she somehow managed to give a great performance that took itself far too seriously and failed to deliver any of the nuance or show that she fully understood the source material. I'm also not a huge Michael Shannon fan when he tries to be too quirky/weird. Bug as a play is also not inherently cinematic. That being said, it's a very underrated movie and does get a lot of things right. It's unfortunate that Lionsgate's marketing push was embarrassing, totally misrepresenting the film as a horror film about a plague of killer bugs.

It's great to see the positive response to Killer Joe. Gina Gershon is getting a lot of strong notices for her role. She seems like the perfect actress for this kind of film. In Showgirls she was the only actress in the film that really tonally understood the balance between pathos and camp needed for the role. Looking forward to checking this out...doesn't look like it even has distribution yet.

[John Cope]

Neil Young still has Shame as his odds on favorite (currently at 7-4). Sokurov's Faust, which is by far the competition title I'm most interested in, seemed to go over about as well as could be expected judging from the early reviews over at Variety and Screen.

[Jeff]

Awards ceremony just took place.

Cinematography: Robbie Ryan for Wuthering Heights
Screenplay: Yorgos Lanthimos for Alps
Actor: Michael Fassbender for Shame
Actress: Deanie Yip for A Simple Life
Jury Prize: Terraferma by Emanuele Crialese
Silver Lion: People Mountain People Sea by Shangjun Cai

Golden Lion: Faust by Alexander Sokurov

Aronofsky said that Faust was the unanimous choice.

[John Cope]

Awesome. Simply awesome. Now at least it's insured some kind of release.

[Alan Smithee]

Awesome. Simply awesome. Now at least it's insured some kind of release.

Gotta second this awesome. Sokurov is a god among men and Faust sounds like he's firing on all cylinders. Can't wait to see this on a big screen.

[Lemmy Caution]

Where Do We Go Now? wins at Toronto.
A comedy set in war-torn Lebanon has won the People's Choice award at Toronto International Film Festival.

&

Alexander Sokurov's "Faust" has won the main prize - the Golden Lion - of the International Film Festival in Venice. And looks like Venice wrapped up the other week.

Alexander Sokurov's "Faust" has won the main prize - the Golden Lion - of the International Film Festival in Venice.
The Silver Lion prize for best director went to this year's surprise entry at the Lido, Beijing-based Shangjun Cai for "People Mountain People Sea." And the special jury prize went to the Italian-French production "Terraferma," about the influx of migrants to a tiny Italian island, by Emanuele Crialese, The Associated Press said

http://english.pravda.ru/news/society/1 ... _venice-0/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I was hoping the easily unhinged Pravda might have an oddball take on the Sokurov film, but instead seems to have just reported the AP story.

I haven't heard of the Chinese film.
The title, People Mountain People Sea, simply refers to a huge crowd, what we might call "a sea of people" in English.
Here's a review*. It sounds like a stoic wandering revenge drama.
Not really my thing.
And another review with more plot description.


* (and no, Chongqing City doesn't have 35M people --that would be the ChongQing Administrative Region, sort of a mini-province carved out of a portion of Sichuan Province 10 years or so ago)

[Hail_Cesar]

Just saw Faust and even though The Tree of life and Uncle Boonmee are masterpieces, I must say that I think Faust is even better...