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Interesting casting, looking forward to it though I know it will never get distribution in the states given the current climate

Did anyone see his last movie, Based on a True Story? The book it was based on wasn't very good, but I was curious given that Olivier Assayas co-wrote the film.

Professor Wagstaff wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 4:42 pm Did anyone see his last movie, Based on a True Story?

It looks like Sony Pictures Classics picked it up for North American distribution but never actually released it, not even to VOD. Lots of disappointed reviews from its Cannes screenings, though.

Venus in Fur barely saw distribution in the US. IFC, 45 screens, $373,605 total gross, no DVD release (but it is available on VOD).

Venus in Fur is also available with English subs via Artificial Eye's Blu-ray in the UK at least

Werewolf by Night wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 5:20 pm

Professor Wagstaff wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 4:42 pm Did anyone see his last movie, Based on a True Story?

It looks like Sony Pictures Classics picked it up for North American distribution but never actually released it, not even to VOD. Lots of disappointed reviews from its Cannes screenings, though.

Venus in Fur barely saw distribution in the US. IFC, 45 screens, $373,605 total gross, no DVD release (but it is available on VOD).

It does have a DVD release. That is how I saw it.

Any love for Ken Russell's Prisoner of Honor? Richard Dreyfuss' performance is too stiff by half, but it marks the last collaboration between Russell and Oliver Reed, and has a terrific supporting cast including Brian Blessed, Peter Vaughan, and Lindsay Anderson. It's the last time that Russell was able to do his thing on a real budget, and was made in a window of time when HBO Pictures rescued directors like Russell and John Frankenheimer from Movie Jail.

Louis Garrel has joined the cast as Dreyfus-- how long til Gerwig fires him from Little Women?

American buyers not interested in the film, now officially called An Officer and a Spy.

All of Polanski's previous movies have landed distribution in Europe, and his latest could prove no exception. But domestic buyers largely gave the film the cold shoulder. One executive at a prestige distributor in the U.S. skipped the presentation. "No interest," the buyer says. Another U.S. buyer also ignored the invite. "It's just not possible to release that film in the U.S. right now," that executive explains.

Professor Wagstaff wrote: Fri Sep 07, 2018 4:42 pm Did anyone see his last movie, Based on a True Story? The book it was based on wasn't very good, but I was curious given that Olivier Assayas co-wrote the film.

Based on A True Story is available on Blu Ray in Spain with English subtitles. Very nice disc - I liked the film, more so than any Polanski film since Oliver Twist.

Found on Facebook.

Can't wait for the hot takes on that double bill...

Warmly applauded at the press conference; the five or six reaction tweets I've found so far are quite effusive, one of them calling the film a "Wajda-style epic".

Reviews

Positive from THR
Jury president Lucrecia Martel said she would watch the film but not attend the gala celebration, to avoid offending the victims of sexual assault. In the film’s press notes, Polanski himself drew a tentative parallel with his own press harassment over charges he raped a 13-year-old girl in 1977, saying “I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution in the film.” To what extent this controversy may affect the audience’s attitude to the film is hard to predict.

Pan from The Wrap
Any controversy that might erupt over Roman Polanski’s decision to implicitly equate himself with one of history’s greatest victims of injustice is dissipated by the resultant film’s tepid listlessness... with “An Officer and a Spy” (aka “J’accuse”), he fails to serve as his own Émile Zola....After all the hubbub of “An Officer and a Spy” getting a slot in competition at Venice — in a year when that competition features just two films directed by women — it’s the hubbub that winds up being of most interest.

Positive from Screen
...this Venice premiere will draw considerable attention because of its director, Roman Polanski, whose past sexual crimes have received fresh attention in the wake of #MeToo and his decision to sue the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its decision to expel him. It’s impossible to watch An Officer… and not speculate about what aspects of this story might resonate with Polanski — specifically, its depiction of anti-Semitism and a world in which a man must fight to clear his name.

Pan from Indiewire
Roman Polanski has absolutely no intention of asking you to separate the art from the artist. His “Officer and a Spy” — a peevish and self-satisfied procedural that unravels the Dreyfus Affair with all the journalistic doggedness of “Spotlight,” but none of the same integrity — seems determined to remind viewers that it was directed by cinema’s most storied rapist....The film’s more damning and transparent moments are as nakedly autobiographical as anything Polanski has ever made, as the story’s hero — a reformed anti-Semite fueled by the guilt he carries after condemning an innocent Jewish man to Devil’s Island — arrives in court to ridicule the whole of French society for rushing to judgment and ruining someone’s life. Of course, it might be more accurate to contextualize these scenes as the stuff of unfettered wish fulfillment, as Polanski has no claim on total innocence, and he rather famously neglected to stick around for his own trial.

Positive from Guardian
Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish captain in the French general staff, a man of spotless reputation and character accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. Convicted on duff evidence, he was exiled to flyblown Devil’s Island off the African coast, railroaded and martyred, like Jesus, or Peter, or possibly Roman Polanski, who has spotted certain parallels between his situation and that of Dreyfus and has helpfully made a movie that may encourage us to do likewise....I’ll leave it to finer legal minds than mine to locate possible holes in Polanski’s thesis, suffice to say that Dreyfus was never found guilty of the statutory rape of a minor.

Pan from Variety
“I don’t separate the man from the art. I think that important aspects of the work emerge in the man.” So said Lucrecia Martel, the Argentine filmmaker and president of this year’s Venice Film Festival jury, when asked at a press conference about “J’Accuse (An Officer and a Spy),” the new Roman Polanski film. Martel said she would not attend a gala dinner in honor of the the movie, but staunchly defended the Venice Film Festival’s decision to program it. Nevertheless, what she articulated touched a nerve. In general, I’m a die-hard believer in separating the man from the art. But Roman Polanski has made it all but impossible to do so with “An Officer and a Spy.”...It might be a leap of conjecture to say that Polanski, dogged by the accusations that resulted in his own trial, and (self-imposed) exile from Hollywood, 42 years ago, now sees himself in the figure of Alfred Dreyfus. But it doesn’t have to be conjecture, because Polanski has been explicit about it. In an interview included in the film’s press notes, he says, “I must admit that I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution shown in the film, and that has clearly inspired me.” Regarding his own case, and the way it’s now viewed, he says, “I can see the same determination to deny the facts and condemn me for things I have not done. Most of the people who harass me do not know me and know nothing about the case.”...I’m sorry, but that comparison is obscene. We can have a debate, and should, about how Hollywood, and the American legal system, should now treat Roman Polanski. Alfred Dreyfus, however, was an innocent man; there was no substance to the accusations brought against him at trial. They were manufactured. Whereas Polanski, before he fled the United States while awaiting sentencing in 1977, confessed in court that he was guilty of having sex with a 13-year-old girl — and though his victim, Samantha Geimer, has publicly forgiven him, and personally called for any legal action against him to stop, we know from her own description of the crime, quoted in a Vanity Fair investigation, that Polanski drugged and raped her. That’s the reality on which Polanski’s “persecution” rests. So for Polanski to suggest a parallel between his case and the Dreyfus case, based on “things I have not done,” is an outrageous lie....I don’t generally quote director’s statements. But this one is relevant, because it offers such a direct explanation of why Polanski made the film in the first place. And when you see “An Officer and a Spy,” it may explain even more than Polanski thinks, since the “parallel” — the element of personal obsession in how he views the Dreyfus case — fills in what’s missing from the movie.

Positive from The Chicago Tribune
The irony of 86-year-old Polanski, a fugitive from justice, returning to form with a story entirely driven by a different quest for justice — that’s a sizable irony, all right.

There's not many people out there where my first instinct will always be 'if they're saying it they must be right', but Lucrecia Martel is one of them.

Jury president Lucrecia Martel said she would watch the film but not attend the gala celebration, to avoid offending the victims of sexual assault. In the film’s press notes, Polanski himself drew a tentative parallel with his own press harassment over charges he raped a 13-year-old girl in 1977, saying “I am familiar with many of the workings of the apparatus of persecution in the film.” To what extent this controversy may affect the audience’s attitude to the film is hard to predict.

Just wait until this remark gets out ... Polanski will be cancelled for sure! :-$

Polanski plead guilty to drugging, raping and anally raping a thirteen year old girl he was employing as a model; it wasn’t just charges, that’s what he put down in court as having committed.

I was under the impression Polanski didn't admit to that? I thought those were the charges, but then there was a plea deal which dismissed those charges and the new one was the equivalent of statutory rape and that's what he pleaded guilty to?

Quentin Tarantino's views on the subject - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... it-1082174

Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of the retraction.

That kind of trolling isn't gonna go over here, Nasir007. Seriously, watch it

I responded to your hypocritical and bad faith post in the other thread. You can find my response there. I think only the malicious see malice everywhere.

After all the hubbub, Martel’s jury awarded this the Grand Jury Prize!