New Movies for Penelope Cruz, Robert Pattinson and more

by Murtada Elfadl

TIFF is not only about the films that are playing there. It’s also about the deals for the films that we might see next year or the year after. Or maybe never hear of again if they don’t secure financing. We’ve already told you about the Matthias Schoenaerts-Margot Robbie starrer Ruin. Here are three other film - or packages if we were to use the vulgar industry term - that are at TIFF looking for financing:

Phyllis Nagy directing Gemma Arterton as Dusty Springfield

The film is titled So Much Love and Carol’s screenwriter is also writing it. Set in 1968, when at the peak of her popularity, Springfield travelled to Tennessee to record the album Dusty in Memphis. An official synopsis reads:

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Fantasia, Straight Ahead

by Jason Adams

Tomorrow marks the opening of the 22nd annual Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, which runs all the way to August 2nd - the fest focuses in on genre films from around the world, with titles ranging from Indonesian Cowboy Epics to Christmas Zombie Musicals to Nicolas Cage. It's got everything a growing nerd might want... and then some things you might not think you want but you'll try them anyway and oh look you've got a new kink now, thanks Fantasia.

I'll be covering the fest both here at TFE and over at MNPP (we covered the fest there last year) over the next couple of weeks. There are some big titles screening like Mandy, the by-all-accounts insane bloodbath starring the aforementioned Cage alongside Andrea Riseborough of all people, and Under the Silver Lake, It Follows' director David Robert Mitchell's (recently delayed) flick with Andrew Garfield.

After the jump six smaller yet delicious-looking highlights from the fest's epic programming slate that we're hoping to get our beady little eyes on...

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Beauty vs Beast: The Men In Rosemary's Life

Jason from MNPP here on another Monday afternoon with another round of our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" series - today happens to be the 49th anniversary of my favorite movie Rosemary's Baby. Roman Polanski's masterpiece (one of his several masterpieces) was dropped from beak of the devil's stork into the world on June 12th 1968, a wailing bundle of joy (with its father's eyes) that became the 8th biggest film of the year, scoring over 33 million at the box office (aka 230 million in 2017 dollars, putting it on par with what Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them made last year) and forever giving pregnant woman something shiny and new to worry themselves about. (All of them witches!)

This being my favorite film we've already devoted one of these columns to it - we faced off the womenfolk with Rosemary (Mia Farrow) taking on Minnie (Ruth Gordon) last fall. Gordon won, same as the Oscars. So this time around let's turn our attentions to their respective partners! There's no time like Right Now for "Sleazy White Men Who Think They Own Women's Reproductive Organs" after all, so I give you Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes), star of "Nobody Loves an Albatross" and a world-class creep, and Roman Castavet (Sidney Blackmer), door to door Satan salesman. Choose wisely, your womb will thank you...

PREVIOUSLY We took a quick trip to the Moors last weekend to put poor Jane Eyre through the wringer again but in the end Mia Wasikowska came out on top (and who wouldn't want to come out on top of Michael Fassbender) with 58% of your vote. Said Nick T:

"I'm so happy to cheer for Jane. It's a great performance (yay Mia!), and if Jane won't act as her own hype man then I'll happily do it tor her."

Beauty vs Beast: Bad Romance

Howdy, everybody - Jason from MNPP here with a brand new round of "Beauty vs Beast" for you on this first Monday of June. Coming up on this first Friday of June a movie called My Cousin Rachel is coming out (you can watch the trailer right here) that stars Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin and is adapted from the 1951 book by Daphne du Maurier (who also wrote The Birds and Rebecca). The book was already turned into a movie once in 1952 with  Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland (which I have never seen; have you?) - anyway it's one of my favorite genres, the overheated gothic romance, brimming with lace and poisons, and I can't wait.

So in the spirit of such things this week we're tackling one of the greatest of all when it comes to these stories - Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. There are a couple of film adaptations but let's go with the most recent, Cary Fukunaga's 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, since I found it a grand adaptation.

PREVIOUSLY We spent last week trapped in that damn cryogenic container so we've got to skip back two weeks to our last competition, which pit the Ellen Ripley of Ridley Scott's Alien against the Ellen Ripley of James Cameron's Aliens. And it was the bigger badder bitchier (her words not mine!) version of the latter who stomped away with 67% of your votes. Said markgordonuk:

"Alien is my favourite movie but the Aliens performance is something else, the looks and glances, the fear, the physicality, the line readings, the no bull attitude, I could go on, such an Iconic performance, everyone knows who Ripley is."

Three Games for the News: Denzel and the Mias

by Murtada

News is coming at us so fast from the 70th Cannes, currently unspooling, that we can hardly keep up. Let’s then take a moment then to ruminate on a film that might screen at the 72nd edition in May of 2019...

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