Months of Meryl: Dark Matter (2007)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.  

#35 —Joanna Silver, a university patroness with a penchant for Chinese culture.

MATTHEW: On paper, the prospect of Meryl Streep offering her time and talents to an innovative Chinese director’s micro-budgeted filmmaking debut is immediately intriguing. Dark Matter sounds like a welcome divergence for an actress who has seldom strayed from inside Hollywood’s gates over the course of her 30 years in the industry. Noted opera helmer Chen Shi-Zheng’s first foray behind the camera is loosely based on the 1991 University of Iowa shooting, in which Gang Lu, a gifted Ph.D. graduate in the school’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, murdered five people on campus after being passed over for a prestigious dissertation prize, Shi-Zheng’s drama is a work of no small audacity, one in a scattering of American films that have dramatized the unrelenting pressure placed on young Chinese immigrants to provide and succeed in a country that has already stacked the deck against them.

But Dark Matter quickly dashes the hopes one might have harbored for Streep’s curious venture into post-Sundance indie cinema...

Click to read more ...

Telluride 2018: World Premieres, Special Tributes, Oscar Dreams

by Nathaniel R

Kidman will be travelling a lot this week with Boy Erased and Destroyer both hitting Telluride and TIFF We don't attend Telluride and are morally opposed to it, in point of fact, since they actually charge the press (and not a cheap charge either) to glorify their name. Curiously the press happily oblige so it's the most elitist of all the festivals, essentially. Weirdly, though, it's not hated despite everybody being so up in arms about the elitism of Oscar season... remarkably some of the same folks who sing Telluride's praises also bitch at the Oscars for their elitism. Cognitive dissonance runs amok in today's world. 

Nevertheless Telluride have positioned themselves as an Oscar giant. Each year they convince filmmakers to forego glitzier world premieres at other major festivals like TIFF and Venice to play in the beautiful mountains to well-moneyed folk for a couple of days. The future Best Picture winner usually plays here even if it sometimes premieres elsewhere (often at Venice, if not here).

So here's their lineup this year with their world premieres in red, plus a note on curious omissions... 

Click to read more ...

Showbiz History: Greta Garbo, R Crumb, Bill Murray, Cameron Diaz

6 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history

1797 Mary Shelley born. She lived in infamy during her time as a disgraced woman who ran off with an already married man but she'll live forever due to her epistolary novel "Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus," which has had countless editions since its first publication when she was only 20 years old. The book has inspired countless other works of art and the classic Frankenstein monster itself has shown up in over 50 films. Did any of you watch the Mary Shelley biopic starring Elle Fanning earlier this year? Murtada interviewed the director right here. 

← 1935 Greta Garbo is Anna Karenina, new in movie theaters. Garbo will win the NYFCC prize, the first of two Best Actress wins in a three year span. Surprisingly, that's not all that rare of a trick...

Click to read more ...

Venice is First. And Opens with "First Man"

by Nathaniel R

First Man star Ryan Gosling and living legend Vanessa Redgrave were the toasts of Venice at the opening of the 75th annual Venice Film Festival...

Click to read more ...

Four More Foreign Film Oscar Submissions

by Nathaniel R

Four more official entries to the Foreign Language Film Oscar race.

• Birds of Passage -Colombia
  This is from the director Ciro Guerra (who has a co-director this time) the man behind Colombia's only Oscar nominee and TFE favorite Embrace of the Serpent.  The new film is a crime/family drama.
  Opening in the US in February. Orchard distributing
• Border -Sweden
  Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes this year. It's based on a novella by the author of Let the Right One In (!) and is a reportedly strange tale of a woman with the ability to sense and smell how people feel.
  Opening in the US October 26th. Neon distributing.
• Donbass -Ukraine
  From the acclaimed Sergey Loznitsa (My Joy, A Gentle Creature). This one is a cheerful tale (he said sarcastically given Loznitsa's filmography) about the degradation of Ukranian society in our post-truth world
• La Familia -Venezuela
  A father son drama about a violent neighborhood.
  Played in the US earlier this month. Film Movement distributing. 

UPDATE HOURS LATER - TWO MORE ENTRIES

• Never Look Away - Germany
  From Florian Henckel von Donnersmarch (The Lives of Others) comes this story of a romance between two art students (Tom Schilling and Paula Beer) and her father (Sebastian Koch) who fights against the relationship
• Ghost Hunting - Palestine
  A documentary about a former interrogation center in which the inmates reenact their interrogations inside a replica of the center built to scale

Related:
Updated Oscar charts for foreign film
First 10 official contenders for foreign film
49 suggested European Film Awards contenders
Spain's Finalists
Israel's Finalists