Persona Non Linka

Thank you to Glenn for drawing our attention to this Melancholia poster starring Lars von Trier (one of a series). When was the last time you saw a director on his own movie poster?

I mean apart from Hitchcock's Psycho -- the one where he warns you about not entering the theater late -- I can't think of one (unless the director is also the lead actor of course). It's impish fun to use von Trier this way in marketing since anyone buying a ticket to Melancholia is going to know who he is. But the "persona non grata" Cannes seal in the upper left corner is the real design coup here. Well done, whoever thought of it.

Links!
My New Plaid Pants chooses five fav Gwyneth Paltrow performances. Where the hell is Flesh and Bone? That'd make mine.
Thelma Adams recruits female pundits and critics to talk Best Supporting Actress
EW is eager to meet all of your Avengers needs 
Flickr More Drive art. See also this week's Curio column
i09 selects the ten best sci-fi death scenes. Number 2 should be number 1, duh!
Shakesville offers up Princess Bride Monopoly (click image to view larger). Well done.  

Source

Awards Daily new pics of Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe 
Form is Void Have you ever seen Jim Henson's Time Piece (1966)? It gave him his first and only Oscar nomination (Best Live Action Short Film). It's "surprisingly spicy."

Finally, it seems that Bennett Miller will follow up Moneyball with Foxcatcher which is the story of crazy rich person / killer John DuPont, the heir to the DuPont fortune who killed an Olympic wrestler on the massive DuPont estate. His defense claimed paranoid schizophrenia but he was still found guilty. Steve Carell will play the challenging role. And, given what Carell has been able to do in Little Miss Sunshine and even Crazy, Stupid, Love. is there any reason to believe this couldn't be an Oscar nominated  next career step? This project is so fresh it doesn't even have an IMDb page yet (though I suspect that will change today given that this news is all over the 'net)

I guess Bennett Miller is only going to do true stories that are essentially tiny- window biopics of famous or somehow notorious men: Capote, Moneyball, Foxcatcher? It's a niche but at least everyone agrees that he's good at it. As for tiny-window biopics -- they're the best kind! The only good kind.

All Male Revue: Brad, Andy and Ryan (who is just too Ryan).

The Film Experience is known the world over for its actressy devotions but for this quickie link-list, we've gone Men Only for some reason. Must be all that Best Actor talk in the air... or rather in the internetz. On that front I would like to note that my Best Actor chart is HAUNTING ME. It went the way of the dinosaur once Moneyball hit... rendering past speculations moot and the html coding is suddenly acting up, too. Yes, Brad Pitt vaults up when the charts are all redone on Friday. Weekly updates, however minor, follow from then on. Aren't you excited?

Okay okay. Enough screams and tears of joy for weekly charts. Settle.

Hello Giggles a must-read letter to Ryan Gosling. "You have to stop. Just stop. It’s getting to be too much."
Oscar Metrics Mark Harris in the lonely outfield, doubting Brad Pitt's nominatability for Moneyball.  
In Contention surveys the crowded Best Actor field and talks Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon.
Cinema Blend  Justin Timberlake has already played one man who rocked the rock world (Napster founder in The Social Network.)  Next he'll play Neil Bogart who introduced 70s acts like KISS and The Village People to the world in Spinning Gold.

Towleroad Actor Sean Maher (of Firefly and The Playboy Club) comes out of the closet.
Movie|Line talks to Corey Stoll of Midnight in Paris career-boosting.

Oh and only because I know I'll forget. A very happy 50th birthday to Andy Lau tomorrow. He's been super busy lately what with festival appearances, multiple new films and headlining the Hong Kong Oscar submission A Simple Life which stars Deannie Yip (Best Actress Venice) as his life long nanny who suddenly needs him to caretake. Please to remember that Lau was Matt Damon before Matt Damon was Matt Damon in The Departed by way of the original film Infernal Affairs. Have you ever seen that one?  

Here's the subtitled trailer to his Oscar entry A Simple Life.

TIFF: A Funny Man, Love and Bruises,... Anatolia

Amir, here, back with more coverage of new TIFF films. The Toronto International Film Festival is winding down but luckily I have a couple of big name movies still scheduled. Here's a few from the last two days.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
This Cannes grand prix winner is a slow-paced police procedural in which a doctor, a prosecutor and a group of other police agents drag an alleged murderer along with them in the rural Anatolia region of Turkey so he can show them where he’s hidden his victim’s body. More than half of this gorgeously shot film is spent during the night and I for one wished the morning never came. Gokhan Tiryaki’s impeccable lighting and the varied range of shots he creates in the limitless but monotonous locale of the film easily tops my personal list of best cinematography of the year. 

There’s more to the film than the actual nightly search as Ceylan gives us indications that we should question the nature of the crime. Supernatural observations, spirituality and religious themes of guilt and faith all play a part in this hypnotic film. At two and a half hours, Anatolia won't be for everyone, but if you’re willing to go along with Ceylan’s delicate look into the social structure of Turkey and his humanistic approach to this crime tale, the end result is incredibly rewarding.

The cast of "A Funny Man" (Nikolaj Lie Kaas in the center)

A FUNNY MAN (dir. Martin Peter Zandvliet) 

The director’s follow-up to Applause (for which Paprika Steen was a medalist right here in Nathaniel's film bitch awards) is a biopic about Dirch Passer (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), one of Denmark’s best known comedians. Once again, Zandvliet has given us an insightful look into the troubled life of an artist, one who’s always faced with the struggle of transitioning his successful comedic career into that of a serious dramatic actor. Much of the film is similar to what we often see in biopics that cover the bulk of the protagonist’s life, but don’t let that throw you off. A Funny Man is an emotional film that can make you laugh, cheer and cry at the same time and there are truly great performances in it. Nikolaj Lie Kaas (of Brothers and The Idiots fame) is a marvel as the late Passer and embodies both his comic genius and his dramatic talents to the same effect. Even better is Lars Ranthe as his partner Kjeld whose subtle turn in this demanding role is sensational. Both actors would have been easy gets for Oscar nominations had this film been in English. The film’s real champ for me, however, is Sune Martin, whose soothing, gentle score is even better than the eccentric work he did for Applause.  

LOVE & BRUISES (dir. Lou Ye)

This was the beginning of my most disappointing day at TIFF. I was excited to see this for Tahar Rahim (Un Prophete) but my enthusiasm died down just a few minutes into the film. Ye’s hollow and underdeveloped love story between Hua, a Chinese teacher (played by Corinne Yam) and Mathieu, a French construction worker (played by Rahim) who meet by accident on the street of Paris was anything but lovely. One-dimensional characters, a sexist and judgemental view of relationships and an inconceivable plot make it one of the weakest scripts of the year.

Rahim tries but the script gives him very little to work with. Worse still, the film gives us a whopping total of ZERO reasons to like Hua’s character who’s inexplicably adored by almost every man she meets. Though, I'd add that my reasons for disliking Hua all relate to how flatly written the character is which is entirely different from the misogynistic reasons the film itself seems to hate her. Lest you think sexism is the film’s only fault, its on-the-nose depiction of social class division is surprisingly even more distasteful. I’d give this film a straight "F", but I’d probably listen to Peyman Yazdanian’s score out of context, so a "D-" would be fair. 

CUT (Amir Naderi)

I’d like to say it was the after-effect of the previous screening that made me abandon this halfway through, but Cut was no masterpiece either. The film opens with a sequence that begs for our sympathy as a cinephile walks the street yelling “they’re killing pure cinema. Today’s films are only for entertainment” into a megaphone. Then, in a contrived turn of events, he becomes a human punching bag for inexplicably violent men in order to pay his deceased brother’s debts. The film’s subpar production values and mediocre acting weren’t helping its cause but I shouldn't express opinions on a film I haven’t watched in full. Perhaps a miracle of improvement happened after I left?  

>Final Weekend: back-to-back screenings of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis follow-up and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights which has just been picked up for distribution (albeit in 2012), actressy musicals and Joachim Trier still to come.

 

France Declares War... (Not That Kind).

If France worries about such thing -- which they probably don't given their justifiable pride in their celluloid history -- they'd probably be frustrated by now that that 10th Oscar win for Best Foreign Language Film continues to elude them. It's now been 19 years since they've managed a win (Indochine) in the Oscar category they once owned. Their best shot since then (Amélie) suffered a surprise loss. Their best nominated film in many years (Un Prophete) had the misfortune of arriving in an atypically strong year for the category. Then just last year they missed what most expected was an easy-get nomination for the international hit Of Gods and Men. It all adds up to a strange golden drought given their much-statued history; they've received the most Best Foreign Language Film Nominations in history (36) but Italy still surpasses them in wins (10). 

Valerie Donzelli and Jérémie Elkaïm in "War is Declared"

Oh yes, the news...

France announced this morning that they will submit La Guerre est déclarée (which I've heard translated as both "War is Declared" and "Declaration of War" for international title purposes) for this year's Oscar race. It's a true story medical drama about a couple who fought to save their two year old son from a brain tumor. Here's the interesting angle: the writer/director is the mother Valérie Donzelli of the actual child (who survived) and she and her partner Jérémie Elkaïm are the lead actors, so essentially they've made their own family's biopic even though they've fictionalized it a bit (they have different names in the movie). The title, in case you're wondering, has a double meaning. The family obviously waged a war against the tumor and on the morning of their son's first operation they awoke to news of the Iraq war being launched. 

TFE reader Frédéric who send the news (merci!) says he's seen the film twice already and it only opened two weeks ago in France... though it actually premiered at Cannes. In other words, he really loved it. Here's the trailer.

The film has won many admiring reviews, Variety's among them. They wrote:

What sets "War" apart from other countless disease-of-the-week movies is that it tells its heartfelt story in a lively and energetic style. Donzelli and Elkaïm, who made the film on a small budget and with a tiny crew, not only follow in the free-spirited footsteps of New Wavers such as Truffaut (who, in "Jules and Jim," made a tragic menage a trois feel like a lighthearted romp) but also manage to cram in many small, authentic-feeling details. 

In nearby and somewhat surprising news, BELGIUM is sending the crime drama Bullhead rather than the latest acclaimed Dardenne Brothers film The Kid With the The Bike. Here's the international trailer for that one which is about illegal cattle hormone trading or some such, farmers and the mafia.

BULLHEAD - international trailer HD from Savage Film on Vimeo.

TIFF: Michelle, Andrea and Felicity in buzzy films.

Paolo here. Day 6 of TIFF brings movies about love and passion crossing borders and oceans or trying to, despite the difficulties. Ladies and gentlemen, bring your handkerchiefs or roll your cynical eyes.

THE LADY (Luc Besson)

Most of you must already know about detained Burmese President-elect Aung San Suu Kyi (Michelle Yeoh), but her unlikely entry into political life happened so long ago that we, especially the younger generations, forget a few facts. First, that she lived in Oxford and bore two boys for her husband Michael Aris (David Thewlis), a professor of Southeast Asian studies and that the reason for her untouchable status in a military dictatorship is her ties to England. Second, that the reason the university intellectuals have chosen her as the figurehead of the Burmese democracy movement is because her father, a general, fought for the same goals after World War II.

The story of her adult life is now adapted to the screen as The Lady directed by Luc Besson. This movie allows Besson to diversify his CV but I personally couldn't avoid looking for his trademarks. Suu is Besson's female heroine, Michael his the Tati-esque old man, and a superstitious general is the campy, quirky villain. Besson keeps the violence to a reverent level this time, even if Suu's father becomes a martyr in the film's first scene. The Lady also has a few montages which chronicle the news of Suu's planned rallies spreading throughout the streets of Rangoon. They went on a bit longer than necessary.

As biopics go, The Lady has a surprsing lack of naturalism. Take this paraphrasal of one of Suu and David's conversations:

'The world reveres you as someone with no negative qualities.'
'I will list my negative qualities right now.'
'Your negative qualities made me fall in love with you.'

But because I like this, I'll call it 'classic English dialogue', pulled off well by Thewliss and especially Yeoh who has perfected a politician-style elegance; in a festival full of misanthropy, characters who are 'too nice' are a welcome change.

W.E. (Madonna)

The title of Madonna's much-discussed new film, is an acronym for the most gossiped marriage in the past century between Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy). The couple belong to a story within the story, which is an obsession for  fairytale-stricken Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), who comes close to the couple's property six decades after their exile. Wally is bored of her neglectful husband while befriending a foreign Sotheby's security guard (Oscar Isaac). I'll assume that Madonna took on this story in engender her own so-called feminist perspective, and she brings a sympathetic and sometimes humorous light to the maligned woman. I would have preferred to see a movie based on "Famous Last Words," Timothy Findley's novel about Wallis.

More on what I liked about W.E. and disliked about Like Crazy after the jump.

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