Cate and Pedro

It's been great having Cate Blanchett in our city. From glimpsing her amazing costumes on the Ocean's 8 set, to waxing poetic about Amy Adams at the Gotham Awards, she's giving us lots to cherish while she is in New York City. And there's more to come. Rehearsals start next week on her Broadway debut, The Present, set to start previews on December 17th and open on January 8th. Before that though she had time to toast the master actressexual filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar.

Cate was one of the guests at the opening of the Almodovar retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The retrospective is running through December 17th, and coincides with the release of Almodóvar’s 20th feature, Julieta (2016), and includes all of his feature films. So New Yorkers don't miss it. 

This picture got us thinking that Cate should work with Pedro. Can you see her in an English language remake of one of his films? Which one?

Podcast: The Handmaiden and Other Heavenly Creatures

We're back to weekly podcasts! This week Nick and Nathaniel revisit a summer favorite that's now on DVD and have divergent feelings about The Handmaiden despite their mutual Park Chan-wook history.

Index (41 minutes)
00:01 A Heavenly Creatures revisit
05:10 The Handmaiden and that time Nathaniel and Nick watched a Park Chan-wook together
25:00 Almodóvar's Julieta and Farhadi's The Salesman
34:00 Doctor Strangé & Captain Fantastic briefly to wrap-up

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?  

Referenced in this conversation:
Nick's Isabelle Huppert e-mail hack | Nathaniel's photo op with Viggo Mortensen | A recent rewatch of Witness | Alama Drafthouse Night Out | 1994 Oscar Races 

The Handmaiden Fantastic

European Film Award Nominations. Good news for 8 Oscar contenders

The Precursors are coming! The Precursors are coming! Though the European Film Awards hardly have Oscar on their minds when they vote (bless them) it's all part of the grand circus of November-February honors to commemorate each film year. Several European films hoping to score Oscar nods in the Foreign Language Film race have reason to be hopeful given their warm embrace here.

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NYFF: Almodóvar's Julieta

Manuel here catching up with Pedro's latest at the New York Film Festival

Following the New York Film Festival screening of his 20th film, Pedro Almodóvar admitted that, in adapting Alice Munro’s short stories (from her collection, Runaway), he had aimed for a more restrained tone. Indeed, especially in comparison to his previous outing—the mile high club comedy I’m So Excited!—Julieta is an aggressively austere affair. Of course, “austere Almodóvar” is still inimitably Almodóvar. Take the film’s first shot: we’re awash in a sea of red fabric. It looks like draperie, perhaps a bedsheet or even a curtain. It pulses like a heart...

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More "Best Foreign Language Film" Oscar News

by Nathaniel R

Look at this cute still from Train Driver's Diary. That's Serbia's submission to the Foreign Language Film Oscar race which was announced yesterday. It won the audience prize at the Moscow Film Festival and tells the story of a retiring train driver training his son to take over. The old man holds an infamous record: the most accidental killings on the job. 

Forty-one countries have now made their announcements official including high profile choices like Chile's Neruda which stars Gael García Bernal and could put the auteur Pablo Larraín in contention for yet another nomination to whatever haul his brilliant Jackie picks up.

Spain's submission of Julieta, is even more high profile given Pedro Almodóvar's international statue...

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