Interview: The Filmmakers Behind Spanish Oscar Submission 'Flowers' on MacGuffins, Preserving the Basque Language, and 'The Hours'

Jose here. Flowers is centered around a mystery which sees construction site office worker Ane (Nagore Aranburu) start receiving flowers from an unknown admirer. Week after week, beautiful flowers arrive on the very same day, then one day they stop. Is it a coincidence that they stopped right after Ane's construction site co-worker Beñat (Josean Bengoetxea) passed away in a car crash? We soon meet Beñat's widow Lourdes (Itziar Ituño) and her mother in law Tere (Itziar Aizpuru) whose relationship only seems to weaken in the aftermath of Beñat's death. Flowers is beautifully constructed by José Mari Goenaga and Jon Garaño (who co-wrote and co-directed the film) who know how to take audience members along on a journey and understand how important it is to have us participate in trying to solve the mystery.

Meditative and melancholic, Flowers, is a worthy follow-up to their equally beautiful For 80 Days, and has been chosen as Spain's official Oscar submission for the Best Foreign Language Film category, a historic achievement since it's the first Basque film chosen for the honor. Individually Goenaga and Garaño have done it all, from animated films to documentaries, but their work together has a truly haunting quality, not to mention exquisite performances. I spoke to the filmmakers to discuss their Oscar hopes, making films in Basque and the movies about women that inspire them. 

JOSE: When I first reached out to you, Flowers didn’t have a US release date, now it’s opening on Friday. Are you excited about that?

JOSE MARI: We’re a little bit nervous, the film opens in NYC on October 30 and on November 27th it opens in Los Angeles, which is part of our press agents’ strategy to capture the attention of AMPAS voters. We’re nervous because we don’t know how people will receive it, and the commercial run will undoubtedly affect how it’s perceived by the Academy.

More on Flowers after the jump.

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And Your Golden Globe Host Is... Ricky Gervais

Hi everyone. Coco here, wondering how you guys feel about this year's Golden Globe host announcement.  

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association made the announcement yesterday on Twitter: Ricky Gervais will return to host the Golden Globes for a fourth time.

Gervais is back after a three year hiatus. Those three years, of course, are what we common folk refer to as the "Tina and Amy Era". And with good reason. Sure, their third time hosting was a relative letdown compared to the first two glorious times, but ask anyone on the street and they'll agree Tina and Amy are still among the best Award Show hosts of the past ten years or so. But let's go back to Ricky. 

Gervais has an interesting history with the Globes. He was the first person to host the ceremony since 1995 (when John Larroquette and Janine Turner shared the honors), and he made headlines thanks to his unsavory jokes. Every entertainment outlet seemd to be talking about how Gervais poked fun at Robert Downey Jr. and Mel Gibson's histories of substance abuse, and for a while there, people tuned in to the Globes to see what inaproppriate thing Gervais was going to say next, instead of tuning in for the right reasons (which, by the way, are the fashion and the opportunity to see drunk celebrities interact with each other). 

But just like anything that coasts on shock value, Gervais's popularity could only last for so long. By the time Gervais hosted for the third time, his schtick was old news. 

But what do you think? Is Gervais's comeback a boring choice? Or are you actually excited about his return? 

Beauty Break: Spectre Red Carpet

What a gorgeous and talented pair of Bond women they are. Oh, and everyone else also looked great in that red carpet too, I guess.

Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton in Loving

Murtada here. The first picture from Jeff Nichols’ (Take Shelter, Mud) new movie Loving was released. Currently shooting, the film tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving and the landmark 1967 civil rights supreme court decision that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Joel Edgerton plays Richard Loving in his second collaboration with Nichols after the still unreleased Midnight Special. Edgerton is riding on a bit of Oscar buzz right now for his supporting role alongside Johnny Depp in Black Mass. Mildred is played by Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D) in her first major film role. Did you know Negga played Dame Shirley Bassey for the BBC in 2011? After watching that clip I’m really excited to see her lead a movie. Negga had a varied theater and TV career in the U.K. and Ireland so fans of S.H.I.E.L.D or those more familiar with her other work, please tell us if this is the beginnings of a new actressey obsession!

One of the many photos of the Lovings shot by Grey Villet

Michael Shannon, who’s been in every single movie directed by Nichols, has a supporting part as Grey Villet, the LIFE Magazine photographer who shot the famous photos of the Lovings in 1965. The photo from the film is evocative of those Villet images. The resemblance to the actors is uncanny, no?

As for Midnight Special, which also stars Kirsten Dunst and Adam Driver, it was revealed recently by Dunst that it may premiere at SXSW next March. For a while Midnight Special had a premium November release date that prompted some to peg it as an Oscar movie. Of course once it was pushed back, many speculated that all is not well. Hopefuly a spring festival premiere in Nichols’ hometown will turn around the buzz. 

Possibly two movies from Nichols in 2016. Are you excited to see either or both movies?

Review - Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Tim here. Autumn is in full swing, Halloween is around the corner, and it's time for a visit from an old seasonal friend in the form of the Paranormal Activity franchise. 2015's entry, the sixth overall, is titled in full Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, and it's important for two reasons: it's the first one to be shown in 3D, and it's allegedly going to be the last one. Oh sweet Lord, please let it be the last one.

The 2007 Paranormal Activity was an exercise in brutal simplicity: sometimes, terrifying things would happen in a couple's bedroom while they were sleeping, and they had a camera set up to record all of those terrifying things for our benefit. It's as blunt and unfussy as three-chord rock. And all of the film's sequels have taken it as their primary goal to screw that up as hard as possible, adding layer upon layer of nonsense mythology, time travel, and a community of witches cultivating one family across generations to be the handmaidens to a malevolent spirit called Toby.

The Ghost Dimension takes as its stated goal the summation of all this mythology into one definitive chapter where all is explained. It fails, of course. Summing up the messy dog-ends of the Paranormal Activity pictures would have been beyond the scope of one movie, and given the increasingly arbitrary twists in the franchise, it would hardly have been satisfying. What The Ghost Dimension does manage to do is execute the reveal that all six movies have been building up to a tediously straightforward "find a body for the Devil" scenario, something that plenty of other movies have been able to sketch out in a first act, and not several hours over the course of more than a half of a decade. It's a damp squib of a finale if ever there was one.

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